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Neither Amazon nor Microsoft rely heavily on advertising income. Neither does IBM, HP, Oracle, Cisco, Salesforce, etc. In fact when it comes to "major US tech

• derefr 11y ago
  Everybody you listed, excepting Amazon, make the majority of their revenue from the enterprise, not the consumer. B2B companies don't need to use privacy as a differentiator, and would gain no advantage by doing so; enterprises want "managed" software that enables them to spy on their employees. Amazon, the consumer-focused exception, makes their money on physical products not produced by them, and on cloud services—both of which are mostly privacy-neutral as far as third parties go. Amazon knows what you tell Amazon (your shopping history; your AWS API calls) but their business model doesn't involve giving that information to anybody else. They could theoretically take a stance on privacy, but they aren't doing much to enable privacy; just coincidentally avoiding doing anything that negates it.
• PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  "Consumer-focused major US tech companies," then. Hell, the logic still applies even if it's only directed at Google, who Apple seems to consider its arch-nemesis. (And while they may not be specifically selling ads, Amazon's business model is absolutely heavily invested in invasive ad tracking, which was my point. Witness how Amazon products that you look at but don't immediately buy follow you around the Web for fucking weeks.)