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Apple makes money from selling products. Google and Meta makes money from selling your profile to advertisers.

immibis 2y ago
Apple makes double money by doing both.
mdhb 2y ago
The idea of who you think Apple are in your head and who they are in practice are two wildly different things. https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-new-ad-product-pushes-closer-google https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-new-ad-product-pushe...
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  I've never heard of "emarketer.com", and it seems less than 100% reliable as a journalistic source at first glance. I may be missing something, but graphs with three-digit precision out to 2025 (next year!) is made-up-bullshit, not research: https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-looks-boost-app-store-ads-with-ai-powered-buying-tools https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-looks-boost-app-stor... Let's look at actual data, such as Apple's annual report, which is an 80-page document that uses the word advertising only 4 times. Clearly a focus of the company. Sales of "services" in 2023 was $85B of $383B total. This includes the various iCloud subscriptions, Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, the App Store, etc... and advertising. Your "eMarketer" source thinks Apple's ad revenue was $5B the same year. So... just 6% of services sales, and 1.4% of total sales. Wow, Apple truly has become an ad-tech company at heart! Not at all like Google or Facebook which makes... checks notes... all of their sales revenue from ad-tech, minus a rounding error for some gadgets designed to spy on you to feed the ad machine. (I kid, I kid... no wait, I don't. Google's numbers for 2023 are nearly the reverse of Apple, with only 19.5% of their revenue coming from non-ad-tech sources, of which nearly half is Google Cloud Platform. That's almost a separate business, so ignoring that, the core Google company revenue is 90% advertising. But we all knew that.)
  - mdhb 2y ago
    It’s truly amazing how your reading comprehension and information processing skills seem to change in the face of evidence that doesn’t support your argument. You know full well Apple is in the same surveillance capitalism business and instead you want to talk about 3 digit precision numbers or what percentage of their current revenue is makes up as though it was somehow relevant. How exactly does that help users privacy knowing that the company also happens to have other revenue streams? It’s not even remotely relevant you either engage in the practice or you don’t.
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      You chose to link to that source to back up your arguments. I just read the content. Was I not supposed to? I'm genuinely confused about what point you're trying to make here.
      - mdhb 2y ago
        I see the reading comprehension skills seemed to have magically changed yet again in the last five minutes. The question that was asked: > What about Apple's behaviour makes you think you're not the product? The response was given: > Apple makes money from selling products. Google and Meta makes money from selling your profile to advertisers And then I pointed out that despite how Apple would like to publicly portray themselves and how their fans would love to try and convince you otherwise that it is in fact a rapidly growing multi-billion dollar a year business of theirs where they are doing exactly that. The idea that you are not the product is actively wrong.
        jiggawatts 2y ago
        And I countered that by pointing out that it’s a mere 1.4% of their business. If a pastry shop also sells sausage rolls, does that make them a butcher shop?
        mdhb 2y ago

Apple makes double money by doing both.

mdhb 2y ago

The idea of who you think Apple are in your head and who they are in practice are two wildly different things. https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-new-ad-product-pushes-closer-google https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-new-ad-product-pushe...

jiggawatts 2y ago
I've never heard of "emarketer.com", and it seems less than 100% reliable as a journalistic source at first glance. I may be missing something, but graphs with three-digit precision out to 2025 (next year!) is made-up-bullshit, not research: https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-looks-boost-app-store-ads-with-ai-powered-buying-tools https://www.emarketer.com/content/apple-looks-boost-app-stor... Let's look at actual data, such as Apple's annual report, which is an 80-page document that uses the word advertising only 4 times. Clearly a focus of the company. Sales of "services" in 2023 was $85B of $383B total. This includes the various iCloud subscriptions, Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, the App Store, etc... and advertising. Your "eMarketer" source thinks Apple's ad revenue was $5B the same year. So... just 6% of services sales, and 1.4% of total sales. Wow, Apple truly has become an ad-tech company at heart! Not at all like Google or Facebook which makes... checks notes... all of their sales revenue from ad-tech, minus a rounding error for some gadgets designed to spy on you to feed the ad machine. (I kid, I kid... no wait, I don't. Google's numbers for 2023 are nearly the reverse of Apple, with only 19.5% of their revenue coming from non-ad-tech sources, of which nearly half is Google Cloud Platform. That's almost a separate business, so ignoring that, the core Google company revenue is 90% advertising. But we all knew that.)
- mdhb 2y ago
  It’s truly amazing how your reading comprehension and information processing skills seem to change in the face of evidence that doesn’t support your argument. You know full well Apple is in the same surveillance capitalism business and instead you want to talk about 3 digit precision numbers or what percentage of their current revenue is makes up as though it was somehow relevant. How exactly does that help users privacy knowing that the company also happens to have other revenue streams? It’s not even remotely relevant you either engage in the practice or you don’t.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    You chose to link to that source to back up your arguments. I just read the content. Was I not supposed to? I'm genuinely confused about what point you're trying to make here.
    - mdhb 2y ago
      I see the reading comprehension skills seemed to have magically changed yet again in the last five minutes. The question that was asked: > What about Apple's behaviour makes you think you're not the product? The response was given: > Apple makes money from selling products. Google and Meta makes money from selling your profile to advertisers And then I pointed out that despite how Apple would like to publicly portray themselves and how their fans would love to try and convince you otherwise that it is in fact a rapidly growing multi-billion dollar a year business of theirs where they are doing exactly that. The idea that you are not the product is actively wrong.
      - jiggawatts 2y ago
        And I countered that by pointing out that it’s a mere 1.4% of their business. If a pastry shop also sells sausage rolls, does that make them a butcher shop?
        mdhb 2y ago