Apple sells some ads yes. But it’s a tiny fraction of their revenue.

Would Google or Meta go bankrupt if they stopped selling ads? Yes. Apple wouldn’t.

What does whether they’d go bankrupt or not have to do with whether they’re an ad company?

They sell third party ads: companies unaffiliated with Apple pay Apple to advertise on Apple platforms.

They’re an ad company. Just because it’s currently a small slice of their total revenue doesn’t make it untrue.

What matters is that the parent comment said “Apple is an ad company now,” as if that negated all the privacy and security stuff they do.

Making some cash on ads doesn’t have to rely on targeted tracking. That only matters if ads are an existential part of your business, and without huge ad revenue growth, your company is dead.

I guess it’s also a financial company, since they have a branded credit card?

I mean if you don’t care about details that’s fine I guess. Let’s call any company that sells and/or buys any amount of ads an "ad company". Let’s put them all into one bucket and judge. That’s super valuable.

Apple would go bankrupt without US protectionist policy propping up their service revenue.

That's pretty bad. Maybe not "reliant on ad monopoly" bad, but pretty close.

In their revenue report this week out of $140B, services made up 30B. 140B-30B = 110B. Thats pretty far from bankruptcy.

And that was just one quarter…

Run 12 quarters, for all I care. Service revenue accounts for more than 50% of Apple's YoY revenue growth: https://www.statista.com/chart/14629/apple-services-revenue/

Hardware sales aren't picking up the slack, and advertisement revenue is also following a growth trend. Apple's stock would indeed be cooked if they went balls-out against the government that guarantees them access to cheap hardware and software that has been declared illegally anti competitive by foreign sovereigns. Apple needs this.

Elaborate? Financial results say otherwise.

That seems like a stretch. Even in Europe where people can choose to use different app stores, few people actually do. So few, in fact, that one of the alternative app stores recently shut down.

Have you considered that people just like Apple's products and services?

As long as you don’t count the $25 billion that Apple gets from Google.

I was wondering why Apple bought an identity clone patent that would wreck targeted ads and never used it. Maybe it’s a $25 billion insurance policy.

Are you suggesting that is what is keeping Apple afloat?

No. But guess how much their stock would drop if one quarter they lost 20% of their profit?

No doubt.

Apple's ad revenue was 1% of its total in 2024. It was estimated to be 2-3% in 2025.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2024-q4/FY24_Q4_Consol...

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/30/apple-4q-2025-earnings/

The point is that Apple will make money any way that it can, including ads. That's why iOS privacy is worse than its competitors. You can't install an app without telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to monetize you as well. You can't get your location without also telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to build its location services as easily. No such problems on Android.

Their net profit was a little over $100 billion last fiscal year. They get $20 Billion+ in pure profit from Google being their default search engine.

That’s 20% of their profit

Google paying Apple to be the default search engine is not the same as Apple selling $20 billion worth of ads to track you.

Google isn’t just paying Apple $20 billion, it’s based on click throughs on ads in Safari. Apple is very much getting paid based on the ad economy.

But it still isn't Apple doing the tracking or receiving the data about your Google searches. They aren't Apple's ads, they're Google's ads.

How does that matter? Apple is still seeing 20% of its profits from ads and Google is still tracking you through Apple’s browser and Apple is getting paid for it.

They pay to be the default, not the only possible search provider.

They pay per click.

Again, they get paid a cut of Google's ad revenue from Safari users. This has one impact on Apple's design choices - Google remains the default search engine.

Notably, this hasn't stopped Apple from introducing multiple anti-tracking technologies into Safari which prevents Google from collecting information from Safari users.

If I open up a new tab in safari it tells me that in the last 30 days Safari prevented 109 trackers from profiling me and that 55% of the sites I use implement trackers. It also tells me that the most blocked tracker is googletagmanager.com across 78 websites

It was a direct listing at $250 and now the price is $179.

Compared to the S&P 500 which has gained around 75% since then

> How does that matter?

Keeping in mind the context of the overall thread we're in, where the OP said this:

> Apple's commitment to privacy and security is really cool to see. It's also an amazing strategic play that they are uniquely in the position to take advantage of. Google and Meta can't commit to privacy because they need to show you ads, whereas Apple feels more like a hardware company to me.

And then further down somebody replies with this:

> Apple is an ad company now though

The implication was that, because Apple sells ads now, they must be tracking all of your personal data in the same way that Google does. And then that train of thought was further continued with the implication that, because Apple receives "20% of its profits from ads and Google" (lumping them both together), Apple ergo is receiving 20% of its profits through tracking all of your personal data. But it's not Apple tracking all of your personal data, it's Google tracking it, and they would track it whether they're the default search engine on iOS or not.

The distinction matters to me, and it's why I buy Apple products but not Google products.

Yes it is.

Is this what you consider discourse? At least justify your position, don't shit out some drive-by popular opinion that I can't even begin to respond to.

Operating ads directly or reaping profits from renting out your platform to the highest bidder, it's still ad revenue and profit.