[MBCook]

The iPhone has worked like that (to various degrees) for a long time. But Apple still added their privacy label things to tell me if an app is going to try to track my location.

I don’t want to download a clipboard helper of some kind and find out it’s going to ask for my GPS coordinates.

I want to know ahead of time.

[daveoc64]

Apple's Privacy Labels and Google's equivalent in the Play Store are unrelated to permissions.

An app may have permission to do something (e.g. access your location), but if the app's usage of this feature does not involve your location being sent to the app's server and stored somewhere, it does not need to be disclosed in the privacy labels.

Apple and Google cannot verify what happens with your data when it leaves the device - they rely on the honesty of developers to explain what happens.

[shadowgovt]

I believe Google is addressing that concern via the new Data Safety block.

This is a better approach for the goal, because if there's one thing they learned from years of offering the permissions list, it's that users can't convert the concept of "app permissions" into a good mental model of "What data the app can collect on me." They just aren't on average savvy enough. So the Data Safety info answers the question users actually care about without added complexity of pretending the average user is a developer who groks what permissions mean.

[izacus]

Privacy labels are something very different and Play Store has (or will soon have?) that as well.