Apple makes money selling devices; Google makes money selling targeted ads. Making devices more secure will benefit Apple's business, so is collecting more user data to Google's business.
Apple also makes significant money from services and app store. They might not have an incentive to violate your privacy but they absolutely have all the incentives to lock you into their walled garden as much as you'll take it, and then some. They will happily do it under the guise of protecting user privacy too.
So no, they shouldn't get a pass on everything they do in the name of privacy just because they aren't an ad company. Although in this case the proxy server is reasonable I think.
For the vast majority of people, the walled garden is irrelevant. They're going to run the same apps on either Android or iOS, but on Android those apps have more ability to invade your privacy and Google is doing whatever it is they do to make money off you. On the other hand, Apple has every incentive to respect their users privacy.
Exactly this. Apple has been sugar coating their initiative as privacy moves while they are actually strategic moves with every step towards crushing Google.
The problem starts they focus on services revenue. The old days Steve Jobs would built Services to sell more products. Now Apple are building services only to extract more profits and revenue.
And as the web include Apple ID for login, more users will forever be lock into Apple ecosystem even on the web. You no longer have users or customers direct relationship. Everything goes through Apple. And in the name of good and privacy Apple is standing in between every business and their customers. All while acting badly in the case against Epic when things dont go their way.
But their services revenue is from selling stuff (apps, in-app purchases, music/video/game subscriptions, cloud storage) to their users, it's just digital stuff instead of hardware. That doesn't change anything fundamental about the business model. They make money from selling stuff to their users. How is that at odds with the grandparent comment?
Is selling their search bar to Google (very significant part of services revenue) "selling stuff"? Seems like it's more like the "you're the product" line Apple likes to market.
Google's revenues are closing in on 200 billion a year. If the hardware business makes, say, 2 billion a year, it's safe to say that the hardware is a pretty insignificant part of the overall business. The data gathered from that hardware on the other hand...
So no, they shouldn't get a pass on everything they do in the name of privacy just because they aren't an ad company. Although in this case the proxy server is reasonable I think.