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Apple and Facebook hardly compete, but they look down on each other

According to reports, some well-known large companies have become competitors because they have the same business, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Boeing and Airbus, McDonald’s and Burger King.

From this perspective, in the global technology market, the “festival” between two companies seems intriguing: Facebook and Apple.

These two companies are both large technology companies, and apart from that, there are few other similarities.

Almost all of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising and only contributes a small portion of its revenue to Apple, while most of Apple’s revenue comes from devices and its App Store.

Therefore, the two companies are not real competitors, they just don’t like each other.

For years, Apple CEO Tim Cook has stated that Facebook treats users as a product, makes money from advertising, and plays with their privacy.

At the same time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) said that Apple’s products are expensive and criticize Facebook for ulterior motives.

The New York Times reported last year that Apple even cut off Facebook’s developer tools.

Last week, the latest chapter of this dispute made the relationship between the two companies worse.

Apple and Facebook hardly compete, but they look down on each other

Sprinkle salt on the wound

Earlier this year, Apple announced that it would launch a feature called “App Tracking Transparency” (application tracking transparency), allowing people to better control their data.

Crucially, this feature allows users to choose not to collect data and to choose whether advertisers can track their activities.

For Facebook, this is a huge problem, because Facebook makes unimaginable profits by selling targeted ads. Facebook has publicly stated that this will harm their business.

Today, Apple has postponed the proposed changes (launching new features) until next year to allow developers time to prepare.

Last week, Apple executive Jane Hovarth outlined the reasons for the delay in a letter. Horvath couldn’t help being furious at Zuckerberg: “Facebook executives have made it clear that their intention is to collect as much data as possible. This disregard for user privacy continues to grow.”

Facebook countered: “They use their dominant market position to choose the data they collect, while making it almost impossible for competitors to use the same data. They claim that it’s about privacy, but it’s actually for profit.”

To Apple, this is like sprinkling salt on a wound. For a long time, Apple is proud of: its business model is more noble than Facebook.

According to reports, as early as 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs) warned Facebook to pay attention to privacy issues.

In 2018, Apple CEO Cook said that he could have followed Facebook and used data to sell ads, but “we chose not to.”

Coincidentally, Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee also doesn’t like Facebook.

McNamee said: “Apple’s culture is about empowering customers, while Facebook’s culture is about exploiting users. Historically, Apple has sufficient reasons to criticize others, but chose not to do so, even though they have seen Facebook’s behavior. How rude.”

However, from Facebook’s point of view, do they make sense? Is Apple really trying to use its market dominance to shut out competitors?

Although Apple’s advertising business is relatively small, Morgan Stanley predicts that Apple’s advertising revenue will grow substantially in the next few years.

So, does it want to prevent Facebook from collecting user data just to make money for itself?

A little bit of mind will find that this is a very strange thing.

Some things should not be shared

This fall, one of the most common TV commercials in the United States was Apple’s privacy campaign.

People of all stripes show embarrassing content they find on the Internet to strangers.

The slogan is: “Some things shouldn’t be shared-iPhone helps you keep this state.”

Obviously, Apple believes that privacy is popular, and it would be strange to break this.

Unfair to developers

However, Apple has always been regarded as a monopoly by various political factions.

Currently, Apple has been involved in a series of legal proceedings. There are allegations that Apple abused its dominant App Store to impose unfair terms on developers.

In addition, there are allegations that Apple did not pay a reasonable share of the tax, but Apple has denied it.

The dispute between privacy and innocence will definitely annoy Zuckerberg.

In 2014, when Cook first publicly criticized Facebook for treating its customers as products, Zuckerberg fought back, telling Time magazine: “I’m frustrated that many people seem to be increasingly advertising The business model equates to a certain degree of disconnection from the customer.”

“What, do you think that because you pay Apple, you think you stand with them to some extent? If you really stand with them, their products will be much cheaper.”

Perhaps what Zuckerberg said makes sense. Currently, Apple is one of the richest companies in the world.

A fake war

The stranger part of this mutual contempt is that the two companies are still dependent on each other.

Without Facebook (and WhatsApp and Instagram), the appeal of the iPhone to many users would be greatly reduced.

Conversely, if people can’t use Facebook on their iPhone, will they look for other social media platforms?

For these two companies, it makes sense to have a healthy and strong partnership. But this is not the case.

Industry expert Carolina Milanesi is one of many people who believe that the two companies just view the world in different ways, and their hostility is limited to cultural and personal aspects.

Milanesi said: “Philosophically speaking, they are so different.”

“Look at Apple. If they are so dissatisfied with Facebook’s actions against their customers, why do we use Facebook as an app on Apple devices?”

Obviously, this hits the point of the problem.

So far, the relationship between the two companies is still not good. But this is a false war, and their relationship is actually symbiotic. However, Apple’s current proposal (new sexual features) is far from false. There is no doubt that their obsession with privacy is bad for Facebook. Apple’s new rules will harm Facebook.

On the surface, of all the possible competitions in large-scale technology fields, the competition between Facebook and Apple seems to be the most unlikely. Google is an obvious competitor of Facebook; and Microsoft and Google are competitors of Apple.

But privacy issues have caused a fire that will not go out between Facebook and Apple. In 2021, this kind of competition is likely to become more intense.

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