Currently, one is a surveillance company that is motivated to abuse my privacy in every possible way, in order to target ads (and, conceivably, Gemini). The other, currently, is a hardware company that's dipped it's toes in advertising and is motivated to sell me devices and services.

If, at some point, they converge, I will trust Apple as little as I trust Google, but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.

Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.

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Rohansi a day ago | parent | next [-]

> Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.

You should never really trust a business with your information. At the end of the day all they care about is making money and most customers have no interest in the business making more money, so you're never really in alignment.

	▲	jmye a day ago \| parent [-]
		I trust a business to do it's business - I don't believe Apple is going to try to build a massive database of everything I do online, because that is not its business. I do believe Google has a vested interest in knowing everything I do online because that is how it makes money. Thinking they're the same, or will do the same things, or playing slippery slope games is really silly and/or a complete waste of time and energy.

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bigyabai a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.

It's not absurd whatsoever. Apple and Google are oftentimes asked to make the exact same concessions, and in many cases (see: push notification backdoor) they do exactly the same thing: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

Neither Google nor Apple have any real accountability at play. The same mechanisms that demand Google to surveil users are being accepted by Apple too. The "ad business" canard is (and always was) a distraction.

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jmye 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> The "ad business" canard is (and always was) a distraction.

Your position is that Google has not and does not differentially acquire data on its users (and non-users) because... Apple has shared some data with the feds? Is that a serious position?

	▲	bigyabai 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your position is that Apple meaningfully differentiates itself by copying Google's worst behavior? Lemming logic does not apply, Apple and Google can't blame each other for assenting to warrantless surveillance.