With Apple, you're the customer, not the product. For one, Apple defends and doesn't sell your data.

Unless you happen to live in China.

> For one, Apple defends ...

It's fairly likely that's just PR. They're a US headquartered place, so would have to comply with NSL's (etc) just like every other US company.

Yes, they have to comply with NSLs. Difference though is the level of data they harvest on you. Google's business model requires they harvest as much as possible and in a way they ensure they can read it. Further, the bigger risk to most users is not NSL's, it's having some dodgy ad-corp buy your data and sell it to even dodgier companies.

> and sell it to even dodgier companies

And banks and insurances for credit ratings. And for screening companies, that are contracted to evaluate your job application on basis of your purchases, locations and so on

That's totally fine, but it's still disingenuous to claim that Firefox is the only other browser out there.

Chrome------------------64.15%

Internet Explorer--------10.83%

Firefox-------------------9.89%

Edge---------------------4.30%

Safari--------------------3.80%

Opera--------------------1.58%

Safari will survive since Apple is their patron. Obviously Internet Explorer is only a lumbering undead husk at this point, and it's pretty shameful that it's still outgunning Firefox by a small amount. Even more sad that it's got over twice as many users as Edge, lol.

Your numbers are off by a bit.

I work for a website with around 1.2 billion annual pageviews. Mobile Safari is about 55%, Chrome (mobile & desktop) 35% and everything else gets the leftovers. Samsung browser is growing fast while IE, Edge, macOS Safari and Firefox are rounding errors.

Kindle browser does better than IE. It’s amazing how far and hard it's fallen.

These numbers do not appear to include mobile browsers. Mobile browsers are just as important as desktop browsers these days, because a lot of people use them as much or more than they use desktop browsers.

If you include mobile browsers, Safari's market share is closer to 17%, which makes it the #2 most popular:

https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options...

Ah, I was getting my data from the same site but I forgot to toggle mobile browsers. Wonder why that's not the default option? That's silly.