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.
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.
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.
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.
Apple works hard to change that though. Apple made 26% of their revenue from services last quarter, it was less than 10% 8 years ago, that is where most of their growth is coming from.
They did use to make most of their money selling products, but now they started to exploit their platform dominance to make money from all other areas of it as well. Apple today isn't the Apple you bought into 10 years ago.
Source of services being $21.21b / $81.8bn = 26%:
https://musically.com/2023/08/04/apples-services-revenue-gro...
> 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.
Because they make more by taking money from Google. Why is that hard to understand? Apples goal is to make money.
People not invested in the Apple ecosystem also use Kagi and all it does is ostracize those people just like they did in the Dark Sky acquisition.
It's a terribly selfish idea.
Admittedly, it has a catchy headline, but the article doesn't contain much substance.
Apple, for better or worse, doesn't publicly report granular-level revenue streams. So, I can't attribute much value to some “expert” doing back-of-the-napkin calculations to get their 15 minutes of spotlight.
Does Apple sell ad space? Definitely. Is their ad revenue or even their profits from ads substantial enough to be their core product, therefore making them an ad company? Definitely not.
It's because of this that people aren't worried by Apple’s little venture in ads because it means that there's no incentive to turn their customers into their product.
Additionally, again, for better or worse, Apple has adopted a very narrow definition of tracking. That definition is the sharing and co-mingling of collected data from different sources.
Under this definition, Apple says it does not track people, which is true. Apple solely uses data they collect from its services and doesn't use other company's collected data, nor does it share its own.
This means that if you like a Facebook post by a Facebook group of expectant mothers, Apple won't suddenly start advertising diapers to you.
These might seem like distinctions without a difference, but for many people, it offers peace of mind.
Apple's is 394b (2022), so you're talking about 1%... growing to, what? 1.1%?
Everyone complains about overpriced Apple products and that's specifically because that is where they make their money. And services a bit now, but mostly products.
It's so easy to be nihilist about this, there's plenty of things Apple sucks at. They're certainly not perfect on privacy either.
But for the love of god don't act like they're "just as bad at privacy" as you are intentionally moving us to a world where literally no large company cares about privacy.
*I forgot to mention my (least) favorite category of Google's ads! Banner ads.
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.
Stop telling that Apple is not there to screw you where they can because they definately will and are if there are no repercussions.
"Apple backs national right-to-repair bill, offering parts, manuals, and tools"
Yet. Apple is running out of multi-billion dollar product ideas. To play the devil's advocate, if google can earn hundreds of billions from ads, one can argue that Apple is leaving that money on the table for a pittance.
It is not maximizing shareholder value. /s
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.
Apple makes billions off hardware and it's cut in ecosystem sales and has a brand image of privacy which helps those sales.
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.
They are fundamentally an anti-freedom company, and you need freedom to protect yourself.
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.
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.