Also, Vanguard as a corporation is owned by its fund shareholders as opposed to external shareholders while Fidelity is owned by a private group. I don't trust any company enough to lock up my money with them and possibly have to pay capital gains tax to switch later, if they decide to raise fees or make the investment not align with shareholders in some respect. As whitepoplar says, they're a profit-seeking entity. Due to the inverted corporate ownership structure of Vanguard this is not a concern. This argument also applies to iShares.
Wait, what? What does this actually look like for you on your taxes? This sounds like something that would be out of your hands/tax responsibility.
tl;dr: basically they just never have to sell shares with built-in capital gains so you rarely see a capital gains distribution when you use Vanguard index funds.
What happens in the future if passive indexing falls out of favor, there's an exodus out of index funds, and Fidelity jacks up fees? If you're investing in a taxable account, you'd (presumably) incur a capital gain to leave the fund. At Vanguard, expenses may increase, but they won't seek to profit off of you. In a tax-advantaged account, I suppose the Fidelity funds are fine.
I'm curious to hear tanderson92's answer, though.
There is always a profit motive. The company itself may be customer owned but the employees are still trying to make money. I’m not saying that it’s wrong. It just is.