Four years after AirTag, Google’s ‘Find My’ answer still falls short

Apple is gearing up to launch AirTag 2 soon, but four years after the first AirTag debuted, a new test of competing options on Google’s ‘Find My Device’ network shows that Apple is still very much ahead in lost item tracking.

New test compared AirTag to competing products on Google’s ‘Find My Device’ network

It’s rare for Apple to go four years between product updates. But that’s exactly what it’s done with AirTag.

And a new piece at The Verge could explain why.

Dominic Preston decided to put Google’s ‘Find My Device’ network to the test, pitting four of the newest trackers from Pebblebee, Chipolo, Motorola, and Tile against Apple’s AirTag.

The test wasn’t just about comparing hardware, but also pitting Apple’s Find My network against Google’s Android alternative, which launched 1 year ago.

Here’s what Preston found:

Even after 12 months of work, it’s pretty inarguable that Google’s Find My Device network still isn’t as good as Apple’s Find My at actually finding stuff. The difference now is that the disparity is philosophical, not technological: Google doesn’t seem to want to offer precise real-time tracking, and so it’s built its network to be more private, but less effective.

Is Google’s option actually more private than Apple’s? That judgment could certainly be argued.

The claim specifically refers to Google’s decision to apply rate limiting to how often trackers’ locations can be pinged, and to only save a lost item’s location when multiple Android devices are detected nearby.

This is very much by design. ”To avoid sharing the location data of individual nearby Android devices that have found a tracker — even anonymized, and encrypted — [Google’s] Find My Device network defaults to aggregating location data.”

What does this mean for users who lose something important?

Here’s Preston’s conclusion:

For those who want to actually track their lost tech, that’s a big potential downside — Apple’s AirTag will often do a better job, and even Tile’s network is occasionally more accurate.

The full comparison is well worth a read so you can see the strengths and weaknesses of each competing product.

Overall though, this new report seems to show that Apple is well set up to widen its lead over the competition when AirTag 2 arrives soon.

Do you think Google’s ‘Find My Device’ network is actually more privacy-friendly that Apple’s? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

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