Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

Re:Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem? by benoau on Thursday December 18, 2025 @12:14PM (#46315570)

A full 20% of their profit comes directly from Google Ads, then there's their own ads strewn throughout apps and the App Store on top so their total profit from ads is probably close to a quarter of all their profit.

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Re:Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem? by ChrisMarshallNY on Thursday December 18, 2025 @12:16PM (#46315595)

They still aren't really in the advertising business, though. Google does the advertising, and 20% seems like a pretty big number.

They make, sell, and support physical devices.

That's what's called "classic manufacturing."

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Re:Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem? by benoau on Thursday December 18, 2025 @12:21PM (#46315670)

Nobody would say they aren't in the PC, tablet or audio business, yet they make more off ads than they do off Macs, iPads, headphones, speakers... everything but iPhone.

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Re:Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem? by ChrisMarshallNY on Thursday December 18, 2025 @12:31PM (#46315813)

I'm skeptical of that. I think I'd need to see some hard data on it.

I spent most of my career in the hardware business. It's really odd to see so many folks unable to understand business models that make money, besides "sell data."

It really seems as if folks can't grok that companies that make money, can do so without necessarily selling data.

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Re:Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem? by benoau on Thursday December 18, 2025 @01:05PM (#46316258)

The $20ish billion was revealed through Google's antitrust. That by itself accounts for a fifth of their total annual profit, ignoring all the App Store ads, News ads etc.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-...

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