Hey, that sounds familiar: Google plans to display privacy information about all apps in the Google Play store, just as Apple currently does with the App Store.

"The upcoming safety section of Google Play will help you understand what data apps collect or share, whether that data is protected, and additional details that affect your privacy and security," said Android security and privacy Suzanne Frey, Google's vice president in charge of Android security and privacy, wrote in a blog post.

To be fair, Google Play was listing permissions for each app long before Apple began requesting privacy information after the release of iOS 14. Over the years, however, the permissions scorecard has become less prominent on the standard Google Play page and can now only be found by scrolling to the bottom of the list of apps.

Nor is this new privacy policy going to happen tomorrow; the May 6 blog post is merely a "pre-announcement" to give Android developers a heads-up that this new policy is coming. We will hear more about it at Google's developer conference later this month.

The policy requirements themselves come sometime this summer, according to a cute graphic in the blog post. The privacy section may appear in Google Play in the winter of 2022.

All new and existing apps will have to declare their privacy information by "Q2 '22." That's spring 2022 for those not interested in business, or about a year from now.

Still, Frey sets out some pretty ambitious goals in his blog post. Like Apple, Google requires apps to show "what data is being collected and stored" and "how the data is being used," but some of the other requirements go beyond what Apple would have developers declare.

"In addition to the data that apps collect or share, we introduce a new element and highlight what it looks like," she writes:

The downside is that all of this is self-reported by app developers, so at least until app makers are caught there is room to exaggerate the positives and downplay the negative privacy aspects. What happens after that is unclear.

Frey warns that "Google Play will introduce a policy requiring developers to provide accurate information."

"If a developer is found to be falsifying the data provided and in violation of the policy, we will require the developer to correct it," she adds. Apps that are not compliant will be subject to policy enforcement."

We can't wait to see what kind of teeth this new Google truth-in-advertising policy enforcement will actually put in place.