You appear to assume that companies don't change in 15 years. Considering the past 15 years where Apple was almost dead and Microsoft couldn't ever be a company contributing to and open sourcing many things I'm not sure that premise holds.
Apple's approach to this is already different than Google's and has (arguably) hampered them a bit, but that might pay off long term and give them an opportunity to evolve, change and adapt in other ways to.
I see no particular reason either company couldn't change their tactics, regardless of shareholders. Granted evolving with technology is not necessarily easy/without its challenges but if staying with your current model is going to lose you customers, and as such data and therefor your income, why would you stick with it? If no one cares enough to stop sending them their data in the face of better/more privacy sensible alternatives, then it seems their model would still work.
The fundamental problem is that Apple has been focused on making end user products for a very long time, but Google has been dealing with data and the cloud for 20 years.
Apple could probably become as good as Google at its own game, but it would take a lot of effort and I don't think Tim Cook et al have the vision to move in that direction like Microsoft did.
I feel Apple will become more and more irrelevant as years pass. With a bandwidth singularity end user hardware will be irrelevant in 10-20 years from now and other companies like Google and Microsoft are slowly catching up in making great end user experiences.
And that business model explains why Apple shares have a price-to-earnings ratio of 16 while Google has a P/E of 30. It's very tough to keep designing great products decade after decade - just ask Sony. It will be much easier for Google to keep collecting more personal information than anyone else, decade after decade.
Wait-wait-wait. So is every other company doing this or aren't they? You're moving the goalposts pretty fast here.
Google is young (>10 years), but they have a large portfolio. But you can't find a "pattern that would argue they would never do so"? And that proves that Apple is doing really just the same thing everybody else are? The fact that others really aren't, but you can't find a proof that they never would?
Or they realized that hardware and software (App Store) is the better long term approach. Hardware is what Apple has always been known for and Jobs in general if you add in Next.
Google and FB sell ads and their products are built around better selling ads. Privacy is counterintuitive to their business model. Apple and even Microsoft can and should focus on privacy because their business models won’t be impacted as much. They can strengthen their relationships with customers who buy into their ecosystems.
Android is the oddball for google and I don’t know enough to comment about privacy.
Their business model could change at any time though and it’s kind of difficult forgetting their links to NSA’s Prism or strange incidents like the iPhone malware that recently targeted Kasperky employees using secret API’s that were only known to Apple.
I trust then more, our house is full of Apple gear - but I still can’t trust them.
Re: Google. They weren’t always monsters, there was a time when they were positively viewed upon on the web pre-2006.
Microsoft also wasn't a data selling company, but that didn't stop them pivoting into one when they realized that Google was making more money from Windows users than they were.
At some point in the future Apple's growth will plateau, Tim Cook will retire, another CEO will be appointed, while shareholders will always demand more growth, so guess where that growth will come from.
Companies always change with time, they never stay the same, otherwise Woz would still be working there. Which is why I trust no big company in the world and why you shouldn't either, no matter how shiny their products are.
If Google and Facebook died or changed their business model, why should I care? I pay for Apple devices because the transaction is clean - I give them money and they give me stuff.
The same for Microsoft with O365 and subscriptions streaming services.
The problem is when that innovative company becomes the new IBM/GE/Oracle and starts treating every client as nothing else but a revenue stream instead of focusing on creating new and innovative products. I don’t think Apple/Google are there yet but they are clearly moving into that direction.
I don't think Google has yet realized Microsoft is going after their backend and B2B/enterprise customers (365[Azure, Teams, Office]), while Apple is going after all their frontend customers[2]. Google still acts like it's 2004 when Microsoft and Apple still acted like it was 1984.
I think Apple as a very mature company likes the long term strategy. They start with a bang but they also realize Version 2 of a product, at its core, is strikingly similar to Version 10. I don't think they feel pressured to dominate a market probably because their business model doesn't require it. The iPod was a bit of a fluke in that sense. It had a lot more to do with the competition losing than Apple being hell bent on domination. Google on the other hand, like Microsoft in the past, needs to succeed with big volume. More searches, more data collected, more services to serve more advertisements, new places to put advertisements, etc.
I think it’s not so much that Google and Facebook will outdo them in this area, but about why they are so much more vested in and therefore better at technologies that are opposed to privacy. Google and Facebook as businesses are all about collecting information about their users and monetizing it, which is inherently anti-privacy. Apple and Microsoft actually sell something (hardware and software, respectively), so the smart move for them is to position themselves as firmly pro-privacy—because they can whereas Google and Facebook cannot (without finding new business models). We will increasingly see Apple and Microsoft using privacy features as a competitive advantage against Google and Facebook. We’ve already been seeing this with Apple quite a lot recently, now Microsoft is following suit.
Sure, but the OP still has a good point. Google can put out major, 'change the way we do X' products out there and completely flop without much fuss. They get back on it with a new products with the hope that one of them will take off.
Apple bats much higher and rarely misses on the big products. They make big announcements and put a lot of credibility behind never seen by the public products. Out of the major product categories, a lot caught fire fast: ipods, iphones, ipads, OSX, istore, itunes, air. Several didn't catch fire like that but still picked up decent usage: appleTV, icloud, iwork, ilife
It's actually a remarkable experiment. Evolution vs intelligent design. Both are way better than the average but each approach probably has an advantage in certain situations.
Apple's approach is probably better for hardware-software products. You need scale and certainty to get prices down and the wow factor to jumpstart sales.
Don't get me wrong, my personal take on this is not based on anything about these 2 companies except what is exposed via press releases and news.
These days it seems to happen quite often that when I read about what's happening at Google I'm genuinely amazed. And so often when I read about what's happening at Apple I'm underwhelmed or disappointed.
Not that things can't change, but my impression is the entire core culture / trajectory of Apple will take many years to change even if they decided to start today. My hunch is they won't, and will end up paying the price for it.
I know this reason is often cited as why Apple are the privacy-focused company, but I guess its interesting that Google seem to be focussing more on products lately as well (in comparison to earlier, not in comparison to data-collection). They have their own phone line, tablets, smart speakers (data collection king), headphones etc. So if Google made something out of that market then I guess this distinction could over time diminish?
Apple is still good. But their business model is aligned to be good stewards of the user unlike Facebook or Google. Microsoft and Apple products are irreplaceable today as well, while Google and Facebook offer convenience but no necessary value.
This is always a possibility. At least Apple has a business model based on selling devices and services. Unlike Google (or Facebook, for example), monetizing users / analytics / tracking isn't the only option available to them.
So you're right - Apple could always go down a bad path. But because of their respective business models, I'm more confident in Apple than Google.
That's one part of the piece that I disagreed with as well. That said, it's true that Apple is not a AI-first/data-first company. As a result, they have less data and data culture inside the company. While these acquisitions may change their culture incrementally, it's unlikely that their company DNA catches up to Google/Facebook's.
Culture is a powerful force in shaping products. For better and worse, Google/Facebook have the "let's use customer data to build products" DNA ingrained into their company DNA. Of course, this has pros and cons. At times, their thirst for customer data can be creepy/controversial while Apple's steadfast support for customer data privacy is assuring.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: How willing are we to exchange our own behavior and demographic data for convenience? If the answer is yes, then the future is as Marco predicts it.
After looking at the data a bit, it came to me why coming up with a single coherent strategy is so hard for Microsoft - they have 4 equally important product lines. If you ask someone what Microsoft makes, they'll answer 4 different versions, each one incorrect, because none of them accounts for more than a third of the company revenue.
Apple has a much clearer picture - they are an iOS company that sells iOS devices and their accessories, such as the Macs that connect to them. It seems they have successfully invented the product that was to take "Apple Computer" out of business - and are selling vast numbers of them.
For Google, it's even clearer. They have one product - user attention. Still, that's a dangerous place to be in - they must invent the company that will wipe Google out before someone else does it.
Apple's approach to this is already different than Google's and has (arguably) hampered them a bit, but that might pay off long term and give them an opportunity to evolve, change and adapt in other ways to.
I see no particular reason either company couldn't change their tactics, regardless of shareholders. Granted evolving with technology is not necessarily easy/without its challenges but if staying with your current model is going to lose you customers, and as such data and therefor your income, why would you stick with it? If no one cares enough to stop sending them their data in the face of better/more privacy sensible alternatives, then it seems their model would still work.
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