Once again, the “classic” Apple vs Google rivalry has resurfaced. Now, the tech giants have clashed again on a quite heated topic: the security of their users.
Apple has always championed the flag of privacy, making it their hallmark. The same cannot be said for Google. In the past month of September, Google was taken to court and accused by the US Department of Justice of engaging in monopolistic practices.
The trial has brought numerous documents to light, including an email written by Eddy Cue on January 10, 2013, addressed to Tim Cook and Phil Schiller. This email contained a presentation where it was categorically stated that Android was “a massive tracking device.”
In this presentation, Apple compared the operation of its services with those of Google and how both companies used user data. Additionally, it also included a statement from Eric Schmidt, who was Google’s CEO in 2010, saying that “Google’s policy is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it.”
In the slides, Apple described how it maintained differentiated support for iCloud, iTunes Store, and App Store, excluding Siri, Maps, and Apple ID usage from ads. Google, on the other hand, did the opposite: it combined all the data from its services through a single user account.
However, Apple’s opinion of Google did not change the fact that Cupertino received billions of dollars annually in exchange for Google becoming the default search engine in Safari.
