Is this question a trap? Isn't it rather obvious that Apple, a company that has never really had a business model built on surveillence, is less offensive than Google in this regard?
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Yes, but fast forward 5 years, everybody has switched to Apple, and shareholders are getting worried that they might not see any growth this quarter ...
This is always a possibility. At least Apple has a business model based on selling devices and services. Unlike Google (or Facebook, for example), monetizing users / analytics / tracking isn't the only option available to them.
So you're right - Apple could always go down a bad path. But because of their respective business models, I'm more confident in Apple than Google.
I know this reason is often cited as why Apple are the privacy-focused company, but I guess its interesting that Google seem to be focussing more on products lately as well (in comparison to earlier, not in comparison to data-collection). They have their own phone line, tablets, smart speakers (data collection king), headphones etc. So if Google made something out of that market then I guess this distinction could over time diminish?
If Apple has a bad quarter with iPhone sales, every shareholder takes notice and a lot of verbiage is written to shareholders to explain why that may have been the case and what if anything is being done to correct sales projections for the next quarter.
Google doesn't have any products that are similar. Google mostly only answers similarly to shareholders if ad revenue is down. It would potentially take a lot to change in the world for any product to rival Google's ad revenue in prominence on shareholder reports.
Another risk to Apple would be that the regulatory machine of government more or less brings the Google/FB data vacuum under control in the next 5 years and consumers stop paying super high prices for Apple hardware and ecosystem membership. Because they trust Google/FB again.
Ok, on second thought, that's an infinitesimally small risk.