More to the point, none of this matters when you’re continuously polling Google’s API endpoints for your email.

How is that different than Apple iPhones polling iCloud backends for your email? Or visiting websites?

I presume this false equivalence is trolling, since only one of the two firms mentioned derives ~90% of its revenue from targeting ads, and the implications should be self-evident.

There are things that aren't as obvious and may seem counterintuitive. Because company A derives 95% of their profits from ads it puts pressure on product design to not endanger that and also branch out in other areas. It would be extremely risky for such a business to have a cavalier attitude to how they manage user's trust and the information that the ads depend on because, like you said, they depend on that ad income. That is why, if you have to give your private information and the choice is between a company that depends on (safeguarding) it (like Google) vs a company that doesn't care (like mom&pop store), I would be very afraid of the latter's management of your private information, the security of their systems, etc.

If you have a choice to not give your private information (or limit what you give) to anyone then that's obviously better.

> I presume this false equivalence is trolling, since only one of the two firms mentioned derives ~90% of its revenue from targeting ads, and the implications should be self-evident.

No, it's not trolling and nothing about what you wrote is self-evident. Especially when you take into account that one company is the world leader in datacenter security practices and the other is struggling with quality service development.

Depends on what criteria you care about. In the example of polling, and the data that can leak from said polling, it's only different in the sense that we _know_ Google is evil in this equation.

So if this is a concern of yours you should definitely not use Google, and you should probably not use Apple.

What the heck does "we _know_ Google is evil" actually mean?

This isn't a Marvell movie, how does doing the same thing by two different corporations make a difference beyond you buying into brand marketing?

Simply a meme about exploiting your user data as extremely as Google can. Ie, I am their sole business model on the advertising front.

A good example is many of the things outlined in this post. People _trying_ to use Android privately, but after an update Google switches all of their privacy settings back to giving Google everything - and it syncs all old stuff to boot.

That behavior is what I consider actively combatant towards the consumer. It's like how Comcast just keeps finding ways to make incremental fees, "accidentally" charge people, etc.

These are under what I consider "evil" for corporations.