If that perception continues, Apple loses recruiting access to a lot of the best developers.
Please keep some perspective.
[1 | http://www.slaw.ca/2005/11/14/google-searches-used-in-eviden... ]
[2 | http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/26/wireless_hacker_plea.ht... ]
ADDENDUM: Yes, the evidence in these cases was not provided by Google. No, that does not discredit my statement. The point is that the business Google is in has far more capacity for "evil" than the business Apple is in. Some comments have pointed out that Apple could have backdoors in their software that would allow them to be equally evil. While that is technically possible it would be easily detectable using network monitoring tools, and no one has found one. On the other hand, we have no idea how Google uses the data they have on us. They claim to play nice, but there is no way that anyone could verify this, and it could change retro-actively at any moment.
"Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes the evidence was all culled from the hard drives and he has no information that Google participated in the investigation."
So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using.
Speaking of which, as the company that writes the OS and Mail.app, doesn't Apple have just as much access to personal communications for its users as Google does? How do you know that the OS and mail programs don't have back doors that can be used whenever it's required? You can't even get root on your own iPhone (unless you jailbreak it), so in a very real way they have more control over you own device than you do. How can you be sure that it's not beaming your GPS coordinates to [insert evil institution here] all the time? You know when you're sending information to Google, but Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.
Enabling private browsing eliminates local browser history. There is no such recourse for server-side tracking. Even turning off cookies (and Flash [1]) won't stop that [2].
Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.
There is merit to your accusation in that there is no way to monitor network traffic over 3G to verify that audio is not transmitted. However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all.
[1 | http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cook...]
It is technically possible for all web pages to track your activity there, so if you don't want to be tracked you shouldn't be using the web at all.
Also, how are you going to packet sniff what your iPhone is sending over 3G?
To play Devil's advocate: The United States controls over five thousand thermonuclear missiles. Sudan controls none. So what country has been more evil in the last decade?
It's important to acknowledge, too, that Google likely has more blackmail-able information on us than the FBI.
a - b = c
Being utilitarian about it, which country has done better in the last decade?
That probably depends on who you're asking.
They may not have data on as many people, but it's just the nature of their business. I think that Google has a pretty decent track record with that kind of thing.
In both of the examples you posted, the evidence was [probably, in the last case; the article is ambiguous] retrieved from the accused's computer's history and/or cache, not Google itself.
MobileMe is paid up front, and not ad supported. There is no collection of private data for the purposes of targeting ads, and your actions are not correlated to your search history, or any website that uses AdSense or DoubleClick. Your email may be on their servers, but it is not connected to a tangled net of tracking information that follows you everywhere that you go. Maybe Apple could add these things, but their business model has been for the customer to pay for their service up front, not for them to find creative ways to monetize any personal information they might have.
They did recently purchase Quattro Wireless for mobile advertising, but they say this is to provide a framework for iPhone developers to include ads in their apps. It's probably a competitive play to get developers to not use Google ads.
No, it must be how you "pay up front" for printers, and therefore the manufacturer isn't trying to make money off you on the ink. Oh wait.
"Paying up front" is no guarantee that the company isn't still trying to make money off you after the fact.
Do you know that your MobileMe isn't connected to your iTunes search history, the songs you've bought, the sites you visit on your iPhone, the apps you search for and buy on the app store, etc?
And MobileMe isn't Apple's only source, it's just the most directly analogous to Google's data, but as pointed out above, all of Apple's offerings are closed-source and at least on the iPhone you have no idea how often Apple is pinging your phone or what data they're sending back. They have plenty of opportunity to gather even _more_ data than Google.
I don't think the "paid up front" thing matters very much, either. I would be surprised if Apple wasn't after the same kind of profiling that Google performs insofar as it has adequate data on a group of users. The same information that advertisers want (that Google automatically applies to their ads) so that they know what to sell you, Apple wants so that it knows what to sell you.
I certainly consider Google to be a more ethical company than Apple. Currently, I own neither an iPhone or an Android phone; if I did get one it would be the Android because it is more open. If I did have an Android, it's quite likely I would develop software on it.
On the desktop, I currently use a Linux box. I've considered getting a Mac; several of my friends have them. But the locked-down nature of the iPhone and iPad deter me from buying any of their products.
So Apple has certainly lost me as a potential customer, due to my perception of them being evil. Do they care? Probably not. However, if lots of programmers think like me, the software ecosystem around their product will suffer.
They're keeping it closed for the sake of their users (most of whom would actually be worse off by a very open environment). For example, a couple days ago I talked with a non-technically savvy owner of an android phone, and my god. A Verizon tech has her killing all the background apps every hour so that her battery life isn't atrocious. Might be good for you and I, but not real consumers.
However, saying that Apple never did that while Google did makes no sense; Apple isn't a service provider, while Google is, in this case. It makes just as much sense to say that Google never required their devices to be jailbroken to be user-controllable, while Apple did - or that Google never said that jailbreaking was illegal, while Apple did.
[1] http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/66661-pressure-on...
I'm glad that you are unaffected by such things, tis a shame for other people.
Apple gets the developers for whom the closed vs. open debate is far less important than the better vs. worse debate. (Corollary: those tend to be people who do not always grant better-until-proven-worse status to openness.)
I thank that honor goes to the Chinese government. Google isn't the one that's actually blocking any access to sites.
But of course there are manufacturers of closed source that do not do 'lock-in', that open up their interface layers and protocols and that price their hardware reasonably.
edit: I really just have a nitpick with the tossing around of the term "evil". It's almost as if Godwin's Law should adapt to cover not only Nazi comparisons, but also absolutes of morality.
A bit more than the average user can manage, and not so good as actually opting out (in the sense of getting Google to throw away all of their records on you), but you always have complete control of which pages your computer will load.