Ridiculous criticism. If Google wanted to bring privacy to the masses for cheap, they could do it. Nobody is stopping them. If Apple makes it part of their sales pitch, regardless of the price of their devices, I see no problem with that.
[citation needed]
It seems like having Apple and Google competing on privacy could end up being a good thing, though where it ends up is anyone's guess.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18535532/google-chrome-ad-...
Of course, marketing works, so people fall for it. I've seen people blame Google for manipulating them with ads. Apple is just as bad — getting people to pay more for worse products. Nobody can offer a concrete reason for why Apple devices are better for privacy (because they aren't), yet they will still parrot that it is — right out of Apple's marketing talking points.
And Apple absolutely led the way in privacy. Differential privacy, secure enclave, rotating ad identifiers, randomising MAC address, UI prompts before apps can access data, on device ML models. And their implementation of fingerprint and facial recognition was significantly more secure than their competitors.
"Google servers communicated significantly lower number of times with an iPhone device compared to Android (45% less). However, the number of calls to Google’s advertising domains were similar from both devices - an expected outcome since the usage of 3rd-party webpages and apps was similar on both devices. One notable difference was that the location data sent to Google from an iOS device is practically non-existent. In the absence of Android and Chrome platforms—or the use of any other Google product—Google becomes significantly limited in its ability to track the user location."
https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...
Instead, location data goes to Apple, as I mentioned in GP post. Worse, unlike with Android, you can't turn it off. Similarly, consider mapping apps. All map location links are required to open in Apple Maps, sending your data to Apple, and there is no way to change it. On Android, you can set a purely offline mapping application as default. And a similar situation arises with apps. Apple knows every app you've installed, whether you want them to or not. Not so on Android.
"These schemes allow you to launch the Google Maps app for iOS"
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/urls/ios-ur...