The first two do not have low latency high bandwidth connections (or often any connection at all) to the user to collect data, so it's not a reasonable comparison. As for the third, I understand that duck.com claims this, but I don't buy their claims, considering their behavior. None of these sites that claim to not collect user data should be trusted until they submit to a transparent audit that exposes all their infrastructure. As for the fourth, this is a tiny exception to the rule held up by some individual with standards.
Apple doesn't fit the pattern of any of your examples.
Had anyone actually substantiated the claim about the unconfirmed non-disabling device ID beyond a single packet and theorizing about encrypted packets?
Because the whole article is based on this evidence and peoples’ desire to dog pile on apple.
Can you be an ad company and respect your users, though? Google and Microsoft failed to do this, not because they didn't protect their user's identity but because they kept squeezing for more and more cash when the UX was already hurting. I'm not confident that Apple can resist those temptations (judging by the way they treat their own native advertising).
Adding advertising likely will cost them hardware sales. if so, their hardware branch might have enough clout to keep their advertising branch under control.
Phrased another way: adding a few billions of advertising revenue wouldn’t make Apple an advertising company, just as selling smartphones hasn’t made Google a hardware company
They already have advertising, at least in MacOS. Every time I put on my headphones I get a pop-up ad for Apple Music, and I can't hide iCloud or Safari's constant nagging to get me to use them.
Everyone has their own limits, but I left the ecosystem after Mojave (with this being one reason).
I don’t know, is that really advertisement? These seems more akin to a program’s popup of its new features or that you can also go pro. Sure, nitpickingly these are ads, but they are related to the context, not intrusive, and not coming from a third party.
If anything, it is more analogous to my friend telling me about that vacuum cleaner he bought that he finds a great buy when I bring up the topic of vacuum cleaners. Surely, it is still an ad, but you get the difference.
As an ad broker, you usually cannot. If you respect the users privacy, and another competing ad broker does not, then the competitor will make better ad placement decisions, get a higher click through rate, and give advertisers better ROI. Therefore, the ad broker that respects privacy will get less and less business and die.
The only way an ad broker can respect privacy is if they can prevent any other ad broker operating in the same marketplace. Ie. You need to be a monopoly in your niche.
Apple can do this by hobbling any other ad provider operating on iPhones or targeting iPhone user through their app store rules.
I think they point in the general direction of Google's Play Store, and exclaim, "Here's another app store, hence we're not a monopoly", and then proceed to enjoy their monopoly.
It's all a matter of definitions. For example, Google doesn't sell user data to third parties, does that make Google respect user privacy a lot better than other ad companies? Sure yes. But Google often takes user data from one product and uses it for targeting in a different product, and it doesn't respect user privacy as much as a non-ad company.
Ad companies generally don't. Data brokers will set user data, but advertisement based companies do not sell user data.
> does that make Google respect user privacy a lot better than other ad companies?
"better" is the operative word in that statement. Just because Google spies on me and is slightly less worse about how they use that data, does not mean that they respect my privacy.
I mean, I haven't audited their systems and haven't seen any reports from independent auditors, but at least they are making direct statements about privacy that the other ad networks aren't.
Being an ad company and respecting user privacy are completely at odds. The incentives are misaligned.