Techcrunch:
“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” said Cook. “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”
Cook went on to state, as he has before when talking about products like Apple Pay, that Apple ‘doesn’t want your data.’
“We don’t think you should ever have to trade it for a service you think is free but actually comes at a very high cost. This is especially true now that we’re storing data about our health, our finances and our homes on our devices,” Cook went on, getting even more explicit when talking about user privacy.
I love that Cook continues to bang this drum.
Philip Elmer-Dewitt had the best response:
“Still, I have to believe that Apple’s best response to Google Photos is not to make a speech, but to make a better product.”
“We don’t think you should ever have to trade it for a service you think is free but actually comes at a very high cost.”
Exactly my thoughts. None of those “free” services are free. It just depends on whether you want to pay with money or your private information.
Too bad Cook is the only CEO with a megaphone on this issue. I wish most American CEOs had the integrity to “just say NO” to ad revenue. You shouldn’t be required to sell your soul to advertisement in order to live in this country.
I wonder if iAd derived revenue is so great that it could not just be abandoned. Seems to me it only clouds and weakens the message Apple is trying to put out there.
I love my AD FREE Apple experience!
From Apple’s iAd page- “Better understand and identify your audience with rich consumer insights available exclusively from Apple. Use any combination of our 400 targeting options to find the people you’re looking for, or create a custom segment to re-engage groups of your own customers.”
Just saying…