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Comment by zevyoura | Hacker News Reader

What about an Android phone?

This is the predominant reason I use an iPhone. I don't like a lot of Apple's policies (mostly closed source, although that's where stock android has been gradually headed too) or their silly politics (Getting rid of the gun emoji? Really?), and I would rather go with Google on those grounds, but Apple's incentives with regard to privacy actually align with mine. In particular, they are a product company, not an advertising company. I appreciate their use of high-quality security technology in their phones.

What makes Google an advertising company and Apple a product company? Since both make products and sell advertising.

Obviously advertising is more important to Google than it is to Apple but at what point does Apple become an advertising company and Google a product company? Is there a revenue threshold? A branding threshold?

Edit: I'm not saying Google isn't an advertising company. I'm asking what makes Google (but not Apple) an advertising company.

More money coming from advertising than products?

90.4% revenue from advertising for Google

https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...

https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+total+revenue&ie=utf-8...

vs Apple: http://marketingland.com/app-purchases-dominate-ads-app-stor...

Apple shut down iAd. That article isn't about Apple's ad business, although certainly some developers have in-app ads, but now they're moving away from iAd.

They're looking at search ads for apps in the app store, but that's pretty limited to just the store.

Of course, I'm not saying that Google isn't an advertising company.

If Apple made 50% of its revenue from adverting would it still be a product company?

Is this distinction about the size of the business unit?

It's probably more on the lines of could a company survive without the advertising revenue?

For some companies ads are supplemental, for some lifeblood.

Is Apple really in the ad business, or do they have an ad division because that's just something that every ecosystem operator is expected to provide these days?

Probably if 99% of their revenue comes from advertising you can call them an advertising company, and if 99% of their revenue comes from hardware you can call them a hardware company.

Google is an advertising company.

Is Apple an advertising company? Why or why not?

Is Rooster Teeth (one of my favorite creator groups) an advertising company? They make a large percentage of their revenue from selling advertising but they also make video content.

> Probably if 99% of their revenue comes from advertising you can call them an advertising company

So what is Google then? As of 2015 Q4, ~90% of revenue comes from ads and it's trending down vs. other sources.

http://qz.com/607378/were-live-charting-googles-first-alphab...

Google is an advertising company, but is it also a product company?

Is Apple also an advertising company?

How about the local minor league hockey team? Are they an advertising company?

Lots of us don't use mobile phones at all for this reason.

The Internet and the occasional use of a stationary landline is all many of us need.

No landline for me either. For the ultra-rare cases when I need to make a phone call, I borrow the landline at work.

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