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Google chose to present itself as advocates for moral values, while MSFT/Apple are neural. I am glad google is paying big money for this. Business could just b

Google chose to present itself as advocates for moral values, while MSFT/Apple are neural. I am glad google is paying big money for this. Business could just be business, but virtue signaling is just too tempting to stop. Because it makes a cause for oneself, make it self-righteousness and tragically heroic. Now they are big enoguh and lost all that gold child status, they want the old style business back. Don’t be evil, said the crowd. Your words are your liability.

threatofrain 7y ago
Apple is not neutral in its posturing and is painting itself as morally superior to its competitors at a core business level.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  As of recently. They've identified privacy as a wedge issue and appear to believe they can leverage it in the minds of their potential userbase as "we respect your privacy, our competitors do not" (nevermind they still maintain a cloud copy of your iPhone contents if you switch that on, or collect your app usage analytics and do only-Apple-knows what they do with that data, not at all unlike their competitors).
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    But because Apple is not funded by ads, they don't have the same incentive as Google or Facebook to monetize your data. That said, it's a matter of time until an Apple CEO looking for a way to juice the quarterly numbers finds a way to put that data to work...
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Already happened. They have search ads for apps; safe to assume they can tie your use of apps into that dataset. Just because their primary business model is hardware and software sales doesn't imply they don't have a hand in ads; the ROI and margins in ads are stupid high. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_search_ads/search_ads_api_release_notes https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_search_ads/s...
    - reroute1 7y ago
      Monetizing data is not an evil thing in and of itself. People are so quick to outrage at anything these days.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Only with regards to to the narrow issue of privacy. But since the introduction of the Mac, a common and arguably justifiable attitude towards Apple by a lot of people has been that "the only difference between Microsoft and Apple is size".
  - enitihas 7y ago
    Ironically, there is no difference in size now, as they both have almost identical market caps.
- Buge 7y ago
  Even Microsoft created a video criticizing gmail privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0

threatofrain 7y ago

Apple is not neutral in its posturing and is painting itself as morally superior to its competitors at a core business level.

shadowgovt 7y ago
As of recently. They've identified privacy as a wedge issue and appear to believe they can leverage it in the minds of their potential userbase as "we respect your privacy, our competitors do not" (nevermind they still maintain a cloud copy of your iPhone contents if you switch that on, or collect your app usage analytics and do only-Apple-knows what they do with that data, not at all unlike their competitors).
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  But because Apple is not funded by ads, they don't have the same incentive as Google or Facebook to monetize your data. That said, it's a matter of time until an Apple CEO looking for a way to juice the quarterly numbers finds a way to put that data to work...
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Already happened. They have search ads for apps; safe to assume they can tie your use of apps into that dataset. Just because their primary business model is hardware and software sales doesn't imply they don't have a hand in ads; the ROI and margins in ads are stupid high. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_search_ads/search_ads_api_release_notes https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_search_ads/s...
  - reroute1 7y ago
    Monetizing data is not an evil thing in and of itself. People are so quick to outrage at anything these days.
JohnFen 7y ago
Only with regards to to the narrow issue of privacy. But since the introduction of the Mac, a common and arguably justifiable attitude towards Apple by a lot of people has been that "the only difference between Microsoft and Apple is size".
- enitihas 7y ago
  Ironically, there is no difference in size now, as they both have almost identical market caps.
Buge 7y ago
Even Microsoft created a video criticizing gmail privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0