In December 2025, Apple launched a fairly aggressive campaign urging iPhone users to give up Google Chrome and the Google app. Their message is simple: Safari offers real protection for your privacy, Chrome doesn’t.
Apple is drawing attention to digital fingerprinting, which has made a strong comeback in 2025. This means that every device you use leaves unique traces behind it: browser type, installed fonts, screen size, time zone, operating system, and dozens of other tiny details. When all this information is combined, it creates a unique digital fingerprint that can identify and track you across the internet, even if you try to block cookies or browse in incognito mode. It’s like leaving digital fingerprints everywhere you go online, without even realizing it.
The problem is that Google has lifted the restrictions it had previously imposed on this technology in Chrome. On Android or PC, users can disable tracking cookies from the settings, but the iPhone version of Chrome doesn’t offer this option — cookies are enabled by default and stay that way. Safari to the rescue: Apple is promoting its own browser as the solution to this problem, claiming that Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration so that more devices look identical to trackers, making it much harder to identify you individually.
Google initially announced that it would remove third-party tracking cookies from Chrome, but in 2025 it backtracked. This decision came after pressure from the online advertising industry, which fears that stricter measures would hurt ad revenue. For Google, these cookies are not a minor detail; they are the foundation of its business model based on personalized advertising. Giving them up would have meant losing a significant part of its annual advertising revenue.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from this controversy is not “use Safari,” but rather “think about which browser you use and why.” With over 3 billion users, Chrome dominates the market, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only option or the best one for your privacy needs.
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