You can't have and Ads business and defend privacy at the same time
People somehow end up thinking Apple cares deeply about their private but AFIK Apple only cares about privacy because it makes them money. Or more specifically the image it creates helps them in selling phones.But the moment the _long term_ cost outweighs the benefits they also have shown to bail. (I highlighted long terms because there had been case where short term it was more expensive because it e.g. involved legal cases, but especially this legal cases are a grate image profit form them as people will use it like "don't worry see they didn't even brake their security to help the police with <insert arrested very bad person>").
Now that doesn't mean Apple is bad to some degree it's a win win for the user: They get better privacy and Apple gets more users. But it doesn't mean you can fully trust Apple (or IMHO any Company).
Google was never going to get what it wanted/needed in China, so walking away was a pragmatic stance projected as an act of courage, etc.
Google and Apple are actually more similar than one would thing. They are both leveraging their ownership of powerful segments, and they are both threatened by integrated software stacks. The big difference is that Google does creepy shit as a first party, and Apple outsources that to third parties.
Google’s ad business was hurt by Facebook/Instagram and the dearb of the web. Apple’s existential threat is someone making WeChat for the US.
It's called Signal.
Signal is an encrypted messenger that have bolted on some crypto bullshit. It’s just a nerd tool.
The technical excellency is lost on most users.
The demography which cares about that excellency also has a large degree of people which don't want a future with a western variant of WeChat. Because it's basically only working with monopolization.
And the fact that signal pushed some crypto is not helping it either. Firstly to many non technical people have lost too much money by either crypto scams or crashes. Then their crypto currency had some questionable technical details AFIK, but I forgot the details. Then regulatory capture of crypto currencies is guaranteed incoming in the coming years (to many scams, market manipulation, hidden high risk investment and usage for crimes especially money laundering) and as far I can tell their coin will likely not get a pass.
That is not at all accurate. The CCP attempted to infiltrate Google's internal systems by having spies get jobs inside of Google. The CCP also blocked all google services and then developed identical ones to compete with Google globally.
The CCP is extremely nefarious. Any government that blocks children from reading an encyclopedia should be considered to be committing a crime against humanity.
You think the CCP hasn't done this in the US with all relevant companies?
However, if Apple still is critically dependent on China in say 5 years, then it would be fair to look at the corporate response to Chinese demands and reach conclusions. If they truly care about privacy and the rest of it, they should be well into their transition plans to other locations about now. And industry expert would be able to tell if the effort, e.g. to use India instead, failed due to an insincere effort on the part of Apple (for PR), or the unpleasant fact that China is not a commodity resource pool, yet.
Apple, an American company, made critical decisions based on what was said, disclosed, or strongly implied publicly and privately regarding both national and international political (leadership) consensus on globalization and China. Disregarding orthogonal ideological e.g. "(American/x) corporations are inherently bad", considerations, -imo- fair minded evaluation of Apple (or any ~Western company) would need to give weight to what political leadership, at both national and international levels, have done and are doing.
Let's say Apple leaves China cold turkey, on principal. The abrupt and unprepared move ultimately ends the golden ride and Apple is out of the handset market. Who are we then buying our smart spyware/assistants from? Some company in Asia, correct?
If the principal is truly that important (and I am -not- saying it isn't) then political leadership has to uniformly decouple from China. Why should Apple shoulder what is ultimately a geopolitical cost? And yes, you and me desiring a world according to our value system where the state can not illegally force private organizations to violate human rights is a geopolitical desire. So Apple should do certain things, but political leadership, and consumers, also need to do their bit as well.
Google is an ad company with a side business in making hardware, software and web services. Advertisers are their clients, they do everything they can to keep the advertisers happy.
...and the one big thing that keeps ad people happy is knowing as much as possible about their customers, which is completely antithetical to user privacy.
I was thinking this morning of updating to Google One 2TB to get the VPN since I just stopped using ProtonMail Premium that included VPN (I decided that Apple Mail with Apple+ family plan met my needs). I forgot that iCloud Private Relay is on, and probably good enough for my needs. Thanks!!