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Impressed that Apple pockets $18 Billion and still mostly protects privacy with reasonable UX choices. Nothing is perfect, but denying Google more data about me
by robg 3y ago
Impressed that Apple pockets $18 Billion and still mostly protects privacy with reasonable UX choices. Nothing is perfect, but denying Google more data about me is one reason I’ll always stick with iOS over Android and why I’ll ditch my Fitbit when it forces a Google account in 2025.
- vik0 3y agoIf you think Apple cares more about you and your privacy than Google, I have a bridge to sell you. Sure, it probably does deny Google some data, but you really think Apple doesn't collect data for itself? It's the world's most valuable company, its iOS is not open source, and by extension we can't verify that it doesn't do shady stuff with our data - and given that it's a pretty big megacorp, experience says to be cautious, to say the least.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y agoApple isn't a data selling company. Google is.
- _aavaa_ 3y agoGoogle does not sell your data. They’re valuable because their hoard the data for themselves and charge advertisers but doesn’t give them the data.
- xnx 3y agoGoogle sells your attention, not your data.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Apple isn't a data selling company. Google is. Microsoft also wasn't a data selling company, but that didn't stop them pivoting into one when they realized that Google was making more money from Windows users than they were. At some point in the future Apple's growth will plateau, Tim Cook will retire, another CEO will be appointed, while shareholders will always demand more growth, so guess where that growth will come from. Companies always change with time, they never stay the same, otherwise Woz would still be working there. Which is why I trust no big company in the world and why you shouldn't either, no matter how shiny their products are.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y agoThat's so Microsoft can make money from non-corporate Windows users, which it makes very little from otherwise. Apple makes billions off hardware and it's cut in ecosystem sales and has a brand image of privacy which helps those sales.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoThat's a good point. Although, Apple's HW sales, both Mac and iPhone, could also plateau in the future as people upgrade much less often.
- babypuncher 3y ago> that didn't stop them pivoting into one when they realized that Google was making more money from Windows users than they were. That's the thing, Microsoft was making peanuts from Windows users, especially after they started offering upgrades for free. Microsoft sells Windows licenses at a discount to OEMs, and OEMs sell the laptops where the real money is made. Apple doesn't have this problem. They make a buttload of money from macOS users because they sold the (very expensive) hardware it runs on. Apple's incentive is to keep those users happy, so they keep buying $1200-$4000 laptops every few years. Sacrificing $100-$200 worth of data/ad revenue to keep those big purchases coming makes sense. It's why when you set up a new mac, you aren't bombarded with ads for candy crush.
- greentea23 3y agoApple doesn't sell your data, they force you to give it away yourself. They are fundamentally an anti-freedom company, and you need freedom to protect yourself.
- delfinom 3y agoGoogle doesn't sell your data. They sell ads based on your data. They also go buy up your data from data brokers that sell it wholesale...like Mastercard, Lol
- marricks 3y agoThey are not an advertising company who doesn’t need to uniquely target you for a billion different ads. And no, their app store ads are not the same as Googles ads in search, gmail, maps, YouTube, and… Stop saying everyone is equally bad with zero evidence to the contrary. There’s a comment like yours every time Apple is called out as having a better business model here.
- robg 3y agoThis, Apple is not primarily an advertising company. I buy quality products from them that last, still using a 2013 iMac that has never had any issues. Even original AirPods work so well, I replace them as the battery degrades.
- beej71 3y agoBut they will still push to maximize revenue across all divisions, right?
- Terretta 3y agoThe ads aren't to maximize their own revenue; that's marketing expense, not ad revenue. The ads that drive their ad revenue are product placement within their store, like Walmart charging for a higher place on a shelf, or featuring a product in a sign at the end of an aisle, or offering it for free at a tasting booth. Walmart doesn't make meaningfully more money when you buy product A or B (not counting their store brand), both are on the shelf, so their motivations are different.
- user_named 3y agoApple IS am advertising company. $4b and growing from ads. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/
- Terretta 3y agoPerhaps "ad company" is reductive, as there are different ways to make money for offering visibility. Arguably the same definition of "advertising company" as Walmart, by charging those selling products in its store for placement, display ads, inclusion in promotional materials, etc. Arguably not the same definition as ClearChannel, who will take money from anyone to make every drive in America less scenic by plastering them with billboards. (And who combine data from third parties to understand who is seeing which billboards when.) Apple is a first party supermarket that lets sellers self-promote, Google is operator of third party billboards at scale that reaches and watches all the traffic. That said, I agree with the thread above that Apple taking great pains to anonymize things like maps trips, while selling user searching priority wholesale to Google, is hypocritical. TL;DR: I don't understand why Apple doesn't acquire Kagi, put Kagi basic in iCloud and Kagi Ultimate into Apple One, and go from there.
- brookst 3y agoI don’t care what Apple or Google “cares” about; I am deeply skeptical that multi-billion-dollar companies even can “care” about anything. But if you look at track record and technical implementations, Apple has less incentive and less capability to abuse my personal info. Its just a pragmatic thing, no need to bring principles into it.
- user_named 3y agoApple doesn't have less incentive and their capabilities are catching up
- Tagbert 3y agoApple doesn't make their money by collecting your information. they make their money mostly by selling you expensive stuff and by selling you streaming services.
- user_named 3y agoNo, they make money by selling ads.
- Tagbert 3y agoTheir ads business is pretty minimal and is much smaller than their hardware business. They sell ads in their App Store in the search results and some listings. They also sell regular display ads in the News app which does not have a massive following.
- babypuncher 3y ago> Sure, it probably does deny Google some data, but you really think Apple doesn't collect data for itself? You can read their privacy policy. It's possible they are lying about what data they collect, but that wouldn't make a lot of sense seeing as their business model is not built around it like Google's is.
- knowriju 3y agoApple would be forced to integrate AI into their products given all the competitive pressure from Microsoft and Google. It would be fun to see how Apple spins how it will collect all the data necessary to train the models. Given the current direction of LLMs, they'll need lots of data to train the foundational models. So, either Apple will swallow their ego and cut a deal with Meta to use LLAMA2 as a base model that they can fine-tune, or I predict you'll see Apple come out all guns blazing that AI is fundamentally against human privacy, so no iAI. Either ways, would be good fun to see how iFanBoys spin this.
- theshackleford 3y agoI guess they’ll just swallow the load and thank them for the privilege like fandroids do.
- thewaywego 3y ago"Apple sells there users searches to Google for $18 Billion" >[Apple] still mostly protects privacy >denying Google more data about me i would ask if we are reading the same news but I feel like we aren't even on the same planet...
- pierat 3y agoThe Apple Reality Distortion Field still definitely exists. Apple has an embedded advertiser ID, yet apple fanbois breathlessly exclaim that they don't track. There's tons of examples, up to and including terrible repairability and locking down components. Crazy stuff. But here we are.
- isodev 3y agoWell since we're clarifying - it's a user opt-in to provide the advertiser ID to an app. That's why keeping Google apps away from your iPhone is how you stay safe!
- tsunamifury 3y agoSafe from what?
- mvanbaak 3y agofrom them ... ;P
- rootusrootus 3y ago> The Apple Reality Distortion Field still definitely exists. Sure, but which side of it are you on?
- echelon 3y agoThe side that doesn't cheer on trillion dollar market cap companies. Nobody should celebrate Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc. They create barriers to competition that suck the air out of the small company and startup ecosystem. Smartphones should be a dead and withered technology. Instead they're wholly owned by two giants that sit atop them and tax them in perpetuity. We need to move on and forward, yet we're being leased old tech because the regulators haven't done anything to protect competition in decades. Apple isn't defending privacy. They're hoovering up information for themselves using their massive anti-competitive platform apparatus. Google isn't advancing web browser tech. They're extending their claws into every pane of glass and search interface for society, making themselves the gatekeepers of search intent commerce. Amazon isn't offering amazingly flexible and scalable cloud hosting. They're reaping fat profits off the back of open source, locking companies into years of bills that slice the fat off of their margins.
- robg 3y agoNot going to respond to the ad hominem flame war comments but I’ll just add, it’s about relative choices, hence why I still use a Fitbit. I can see how each public company makes money and can examine their technical decisions. I’ve been working in wearables and healthcare, for instance, since 2010. Fitbit sends all data to the cloud then updates your data in your app. Not a huge deal and provides nice API opportunities. But as soon as Google takes over that data explicitly, I expect it will be used to advertise to me, despite the assurances to the contrary on the acquisition. By contrast, Apple chose to develop a strong privacy model for health data on the Phone. They certainly didn’t need to and could have readily chosen the same cloud-first implementation. But they didn’t. And the APIs are harder to work with as a consequence. I respect and appreciate those decisions and so I buy their products more. You may choose differently.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago> Apple chose to develop a strong privacy model for health data on the Phone never seen an ad related to my health on Google, despite using their software to keep track of it
- robg 3y agoYet. I choose to not give them that opportunity given their main revenue stream when Apple gives me better choices for my health data.
- issafram 3y agoJust use Firefox... It isn't about operating systems
- greentea23 3y agoFirefox is just a skin on iOS because Apple forces Safari's web implementation on all iOS browsers via their draconian App Store. So it is very much about operating systems.
- issafram 3y agoSorry I should've been clearer. I was talking about Android. The reasoning to stick to iOS made no sense. The user isn't locked into Chrome.