This will be an interesting competition. Google, for openness and transparency; Apple, for control and privacy.
[1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1bef71b8-e433-11e3-a73a-00144...
Naturally they are both vying for leverage. To borrow a line from The Lords of Strategy, "the key way to think about competitive advantage is to think about how to design ecology in such a way to achieve goals you’re trying to pursue" [1].
Apple monetises device sales. It fiercely protects those sales by ensuring everything one does in its ecosystem is done through its devices. That fortification gives it more freedom with user data, which it can play against Google by encrypting and anonymizing its users' activity.
Google, on the other hand, monetises its access to user data. It fiercely protects that access by ensuring everything one does in its ecosystem runs through its servers. That fortification gives it more freedom with devices and standards, which it can play against Apple by encouraging modularity, adaptability, and customisation.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Lords-Strategy-Intellectual-Corpor...
Maybe flexible?
I don't really see it. They have released some stuff as / contributed to open source, but so has Apple.
By transparency, do you mean their real name policy?
Google is for "openness" only when it doesn't impact their bottom line.
I love some of the hyperbole that gets written on HN about Google/Android.
Where do you even get some of this nonsense?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean — that Google openly and transparently tracks user behaviors so that they can make money on targeted advertising?
If you try to compare the two companies, I'd say the difference is that Apple charges you a premium for their devices (thus making money), while Google gathers data about you so that it can be sold to advertisers (thus making money). Theoretically, each company could do both, but recently Apple started differentiating itself by actually emphasizing privacy and limiting access to data about users, in many places.
I do agree that it will be interesting, though.
Like Netflix vs. YouTube. Netflix fights for your ability to stream HD videos comfortably because you pay for the service. YouTube crams a perfectly-buffered, crisp HD ad down your throat before leaving you with a video that might stutter or fail to load even at 480p. Sure, people can't complain when it's free (though they do), but I think it really limits what an experience can be, and I don't consider that particularly user-centered.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
Edit: Fixed some parallel structure
The disconnect is there for many videos where a perfectly buffered ad precedes a slow buffering video or something, but they seem to use that technology on some user videos too I think - or something similar.
Due to the nature of how CDNs work the ads don't normally need special treatment.
They simply benefit from being 'very popular videos'. Meaning they stay hot in all edge caches because everyone, everywhere is watching them all the time.
1. The advertisers who pay google get their money from us, added to the prices of the things we buy. There is no free lunch.
2. The overhead cost of advertising is huge and we pay for that too.
3. We pay the opportunity cost of a product that cannot put users first because they live or die by giving advertisers what they want (and what we want indirectly and secondarily). This includes both the cost of lost privacy as well as well as design that optimizes advertising revenue. As has been said, we are more Google's products than we are their customers.
4. We pay the social costs. Democracy and the free market assume people make voting and purchasing decisions based on facts and reason. Advertising as predominantly about manipulation and deceit. I believe this is the most expensive cost of services that rely on advertising revenue.
Added together, we are paying a lot more for "free" web searches and email than if we could just straight up pay Google for straight-up ad-free versions.
[This is a condensed version of a more detailed case with reference links that I made here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773]
I don't see how this move is anything out of line with something Google might do. Google can track you because you're using their services on their OS. They don't need a network of WiFi access points to triangulate your location, they can just read it out of your phone's GPS receiver. Randomizing your MAC when scanning for networks is in the same nature as enabling SSL by default for Google services -- it doesn't hide anything from Google (or, as the case may be, from Apple) but it hides things from other people you don't want observing you.
Yes, Apple certainly wouldn't develop/release a product whose sole purpose is to track user's physical presence, with the primary use point being able to sell the ability to push 'app usage': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/03/apples-ios-8-uses-...
This is about the ability to track handsets, and how Apple wants to corner the market on tracking their own handsets.
In order to for it to be used to track users, the user would have to run an app that detects the beacon and then communicates back to the business. In other words, the user has to opt in to tracking.
You are wrong, the point of iBeacon is to allow an app to track its position.
Apple is not about privacy, they're about controlling what they consider to be their customers. They will be the gateway the users go through for any service whatsoever. They get their 30% no matter what.
The big difference is opting in and consent. That’s what’s important. Also, yeah, Apple get their 30% – but only if apps actually cost anything. Those store apps usually don’t cost anything (the stores want to sell the stuff in the stores, not apps) so they will cost Apple money, not make Apple money.
I don’t really get where you see the incentive for Apple to do this, besides privacy.
Also, iBeacon broadcasts can be detected by Android, or any other platform that wants to. I'm surprised no one has said this on the thread. It's clearly not about Apple lock-in.
Here's an Android library for doing it: http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/ibeacon/android/
It's difficult to reconcile this claim with their participation in PRISM et. al., previous long-term storage of cell tower locations, ownership of a mobile ad network, and wanton abuse of the patent system to stifle competition.
Use (or abuse) of the patent system seems entirely orthogonal to privacy/security.
> I still haven't changed my mind
Well you should have. You've been thoroughly shot down. The fact you don't accept that says more about you than anyone else.
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I'll admit I haven't invested my best efforts into my comments on this thread, but where other than an Apple thread would every single comment by one person be downvoted beyond -4? It's not worth the effort if one knows one's comments will be grayed out anyway.
Even mpyne's much more thorough comment was downvoted, so it's clear that the downvotes aren't strictly targeting poor argumentation. Furthermore, if that were the case, there's no reason to target every single comment by a person equally, as inevitably some of them must be better argued than others.
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I never shifted any goalposts. All I said was that it's difficult to reconcile user IBM's claim that Apple wants to be the "privacy" company with their actual behavior, then provided clarifications when prompted.
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Where? I see lots of disagreement, but no disproof. Show me the counterargument of the form, "Apple can be trusted despite these events because...".
It's easy to shoot somebody down. Just yell louder. What I've yet to see is a solid refutation to any of the things I said. A downvote is argumentatively equivalent to yelling, "Shut up!" So let's see how many "Shut ups" there are, and how many refutations.
It takes 5 counted downvotes to bring a comment from +1 to -4, where all of my other comments currently lie (I don't know how the HN anti-voting-ring algo turns clicks into actual downvotes, so there may be even more). However, beyond -4 points the comments can still get lighter. I'll assume that #aeaeae is the original -4 comment, since it's the darkest of my comments on this thread. I also have comments at #bebebe, #cecece and #dddddd. So I'll count #ae as 5, #be as 6, #ce as 7, and #dd as 8 or more.
Original comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865747 - #dddddd - 8+
Location history - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865843 - #bebebe - 6
[Tracking] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866011 - #dddddd - 8+
[Logging] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866147 - #dddddd - 8+
Physical access - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866013 - #dddddd - 8+
Cloud sync - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866132 - #cecece - 7
Good citizen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865835 - #dddddd - 8+
Worthy of trust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865835 - #cecece - 7
Thanks, everyone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866375 - #aeaeae - 5
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Total: 65+ downvotes
Still don't know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865810
This again? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865877
Tracking semantics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866094
User's devices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865867
Do you have proof - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866098
Orthogonal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865778
Big corps not good - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7865871
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Total: 7 comments (4 one-liners)
So again, where's the refutation? MAC address randomization is awesome, but why can I trust Apple to take the position of the "privacy" company?
- I don't see how constructing a database of cell tower locations violates privacy. They are beacons used for finding the user's location when they have location services turned on.
- iAd is a joke of an ad network, and stores a negligible amount of user data compared to Google's. It's also relatively easy to reset tracking on iAd, for the few apps that do use it.
They were storing location history: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/04/20/iphone.tracking/in...
Edit: there are more ways for data to get into the "cloud" than "iCloud".
Edit: FWIW, "track" is the word used in the CNN article I linked.
Sure we do. PRISM has an NSA part and a company part. The company had to build out their end in order to participate in PRISM.
However it's important to realize that compliance in some form with NSLs and warrants was not optional for Apple. By not participating in PRISM they would simply have turned over the same data on each request by manual means.
That modality is probably an even bigger threat to user privacy than PRISM. In PRISM, Apple's legal team would have to vet each and every single NSL or warrant and then manually activate an automated process to ship the required data over. While Apple didn't release a ton of details about how they implement it, this automated process is precisely the thing that can be done without a raft of Apple employees having to map/reduce it all manually (and possibly leak part of it themselves, maliciously or accidentally).