Talking about billions is disingenuous, you should be talking about percentages of revenue. Ten billion _sounds_ like a lot but really isn't.
For Google, over 80% of their revenue comes from ads.
Apple's revenue is around 380 billion, 5-10 billion in ads is in the "other" category if you draw a pie chart of it... They make 30 billion just selling iPads - their worst selling product.
Apple can lose the ad category completely and they won't even notice it. If Google's ads go away because of privacy protections, the company will die.
Talking absolutes is not accurate either. Not all revenue is equal.
There is reason why NVDIA, TSLA or stocks with growth[1] potential gets the P/E multiple that their peers do not or an blue chip traditional company can only dream of. The core of Apple revenue the biggest % chunk of iPhone sales is stagnant at best falling at worst. Services is their fastest growing revenue segment and already is ~$100 B of the $380B. Ads is a key component of that, 5 years back Ads was less < $1B, that is the important part.
Also margins matter, even at Apple where there is enormous margin for hardware, gross margins for services is going to be higher, that is simple economics of any software service cost of extra user or item is marginal. The $100B is worth lot more than equivalent $100B in iPhone, iPad sales where significant chunk will go to vendors.
Executives are compensated on stock performance, stock valuation depends on expected future growth a lot. Apple's own attempts and the billions invested to get into Auto, Healthcare, or Virtual Reality are a testament to that need to find new streams of revenue.
It would be naive to assume a fast growing business unit does not get outsized influence, any middle manager in a conglomerate would know how true this is.
A Disney theme park executive doing even 5x revenue as say the Disney+ one will not get the same influence, budgets,resources or respect or career paths.
[1] Expected Growth, doesn't have to be real,when it does not materialize then market will correct as is happening to an extent with TSLA.
> Google is an ad company, they have a full model of what you like and dont like at different states of your life built.
Thats not what I was saying. I was saying that Apple extract more information than google does. I was not saying that Apple process it to make a persona out of you. Thats not the issue here. Apple is saying that they are a "Privacy first" company. To be that, you need to not be extracting data in the first place.
Yes, they make lots of noise about how they do lots of things on device. Thats great and to be encouraged. But Apple are still extracting your friend list, precise location, financial records, various biometrics, browsing and app history. ANd for sure, they need some of that data to provide services.
But whats the data life cycle? are they deleting it on time? who has access to it, what about when a new product wants to use it? how do they stop internal bad actors?
All I want you to do is imagine that Facebook has made iOS, and the iphone, and is now rolling out these features. They are saying the same things as Apple, do you trust them?
Do you believe what they say?
I don't want Apple to fail, I just want people to think critically about a very very large for profit company. Apple is not our friend, and we shouldn't be treating them like they are.
I think what he's getting at is that Apple does collect a lot of very similar data about it's users. Apple Maps still collects data about where you've driven - the difference is that they don't turn around and sell that data like Google loves to do.
o your facial biometrics (apple photos tags people with similar faces, something FAcebook got fined for)
o Who emails you, who you email
With these changes, you'll need to allow apple to process the contents of the messages that you send and receive. If you read their secuirity blog it has a lot of noise about E2E security, then admit that its not practical for things other than backups and messaging.
they then say they will strive to make userdata ephemeral in the apple private cloud.
I'm not saying that they will abuse it, I'm just saying that we should give apple the same level of scrutiny that we give people like Facebook.
Infact, personally I think we should use Facebook as the shitty stick to test data use for everyone.
What do you mean by the “record”? It seems like you think this means Apple somehow has access and stores all that information in their cloud and we just have to hope/trust that they don’t decide they want to poke around in it?
You should look more into their security architecture if you’re curious about stuff like this. The way Secure Enclave, E2EE (including the Advanced Data Protection feature for all iCloud data), etc. The reality is that they use a huge range of privacy enhancing approaches to minimize what data has to leave your device and how it can be used. For example the biometrics you mention are never outside the Secure Enclave in the chip on your phone and nobody except you can access them unless they have your passcode. Things like running facial recognition on your photos library is handled locally on your device with no information going up to the cloud. FindMy is also architected in a fully E2E encrypted way.
You can browse their hundreds of pages of security and privacy documentation via the table of contents here to look up any specific service or functionality you want to know more about: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/welcome/web
by record, I mean precisely that. Apple stores this data. As the Key bearer it has significant control.
Moreover, because apple has great PR, you don't hear about privacy breeches. Everyone seems to forget they made a super cheap and for a long time undetectable stalking service. Despite the warnings. (AirTag)
Had that been Facebook or Google, it would have been the end of the feature. They have improved the unauthorised tracking flow, but its really quite unreliable with ios, and really bad in android still.
> You should look more into their security architecture if you’re curious about stuff like this.
I have, and its a brilliant manifesto. I especially love the documentation on PCC.
> If you choose to enable Advanced Data Protection, the majority of your iCloud data – including iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes and more – is protected using end-to-end encryption.
Ok good, so its not much different to normal right?
> When you turn on Advanced Data Protection, access to your iCloud data on the web at iCloud.com is disabled
Which leads me to this:
> It seems like you think this means Apple somehow has access and stores all that information in their cloud and we just have to hope/trust that they don’t decide they want to poke around in it?
You're damn right I do. Its the same with Google, and Facebook. We have no real way of verifying that trust. People trust Apple, because they are great at PR. But are they actually good at privacy? We have no real way of finding out, because they also have really reactive lawyers.
Google is an ad company, they have a full model of what you like and dont like at different states of your life built.
What does Apple have that's even close?