8/11/2019 Tim Cook Basically Just Said He Was 'Offended' by the Way Google and Amazon Do Business _ Business Insider India

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Tim Cook Basically Just Said He Was 'Offended' By The Way Google And Amazon Do BusinessJIM EDWARDS (HTTP://WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM/AUTHOR/JIM-EDWARDS?IR=C) 4 SEP 16, 2014, 04.23 PM

(https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/541814576bb3f7ea33f059f9-960/tim-cook-iwatch-2-2.jpg)

Apple CEO Tim Cook has given us perhaps the most important - and possibly most interesting - statement onindividual privacy he's ever made.

And he used it to criticize Google and Amazon, without actually naming them.

He said he was "offended" by the way they conduct business, which is basically by mining your personal informationand credit card data.

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Apple (http://www.hulu.com/watch/686851)

Tim Cook unveils the Apple Watch.

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The biggest change the internet age has pushed onto society is the erosion of privacy, and the increase in the ability of governments and private companies to conduct surveillance on private citizens, often with those citizens' willingcooperation. An entire generation has grown up, post 2000, that will never know what it was like to live in an era(roughly pre-1995) when most people's lives were conducted in complete anonymity - because the tech just wasn'tthere to record what we were doing.

"I'm offended by lots of it."

(https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5415c27769bedd53724a17aa-960/screen shot 2014-09-14 at 12.27.09pm.png)Screenshot / Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/watch/686851)

Tim Cook talks to Charlie Rose on PBS.

Cook talked about this with Charlie Rose on PBS in the US (http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-privacy-2014-9). Rose asked him:

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8/11/2019 Tim Cook Basically Just Said He Was 'Offended' by the Way Google and Amazon Do Business _ Business Insider India

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A lot of people say, you know, have said to me, there's a whole ton of information already out there, that are inthe possession of companies like Google, like so many other companies, that that information is there and they worry about that ...

Cook's answer appears to reference the way Google and Amazon make money. Google scans its users' Gmailaddresses and tracks their internet activity, and then sells that data anonymously and in aggregate to advertisers. Amazon holds your credit card number and purchase history, and promotes further goods to you based on that.

Cook described those business models - again, without naming either company - and added, "I'm offended by lots of it."

Apple doesn't hold information about its users' messages, he said. "Our business is not based on having informationabout you. You're not our product. ... if they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think youhave a right to be worried."

That last statement - "you're not our product" - is a reference to a common business model in tech: That a company provides you with a free service, like Gmail, and in return sells your data to advertisers. "If you're not paying for it,then you are the product," is a common mantra in the tech world.

That's basically Google's model.

"We don't want it. We're not in that business."So it's hard to read Cook's comments and conclude that he is not offended by Google's entire operation. (And indeed, Apple's own version of Google's mobile ad operation, iAd, is a thin shadow of Google's Admob system for Android;it's really an afterthought.)

When it comes to credit cards, Cook said, "From our point of view, you can see what we're doing on the credit cardthing. We don't want it. We're not in that business. I'm offended by lots of it."

Apple is in that business, of course - it has nearly 1 billion credit cards on file through iTunes. But it doesn't use thatdata to target users the way Amazon does. So Cook also appears to be expressing a dislike of Amazon here.

Maybe we're reading too much into this. Maybe Cook was not thinking about Google or Amazon when he said thesethings. (If not, who was he referring to?)

It doesn't matter: The bottom line is that Cook clearly believes that Apple users have more privacy protection thanany other tech company customers out there. It's a strong statement.

Form your own conclusion: We've published the full exchange below.

Charlie Rose: A lot of people say, you know, have said to me, there's a whole ton of information already outthere, that are in the possession of companies like Google, like so many other companies, that that information isthere and they worry about that. Too much personal information is out there and who has access to it, that kindof thing, which is different from than the national security implications of what you do to listen in on people'sphone conversations or what technology companies do to provide a list of whatever might happen.

Tim Cook: We take a very different view of this than a lot of other companies have. Our view is, when we designa new service, we try not to collect data. So we're not reading your email. We're not reading your iMessage. If thegovernment laid a subpoena to get iMessages, we can't provide it. It's encrypted and we don't have a key. And soit's sort of, the door is closed. But our business Charlie, is based on selling these [devices]. Our business is not based on having information about you. You're not our product. Our product are these, and this watch, and Macsand so forth. And so we run a very different company.

8/11/2019 Tim Cook Basically Just Said He Was 'Offended' by the Way Google and Amazon Do Business _ Business Insider India

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Raj (Bangalore) on 17 Sep, 2014 11:19 AM said:

Irony just drowned itself and committed suicide.

jabberwolf (San Bruno) on 16 Sep, 2014 09:43 PM said:

Bwaahahahaha like Apple doesnt mine your data from iTunes and the App store... AHHAHAHAAAA Pot meet kettle! Not to mention the insane lack of Apple security. All this while them assuring us your credit card information is safe with them.. bwaaaahahahaaahaaaaaaa!!!! But whats pathetic are thesheep that follow this nonsense and believe apple.

Too Close (India) on 16 Sep, 2014 07:24 PM said:

So, what I am saying Charlie, is that even though we can't answer government requests for information because our stuff is encrypted, we can allow hackers to steal all sorts of stuff including nude selfies from our cloud service. What's even more amazing Charlie is that right after a massive security

breach, we can get 4 million people to buy a bigger version of what they already own. But don't worry, only hackers read your e-mails, not us.

PaulC (New York) on 16 Sep, 2014 07:11 PM said:

So in Tim Cook's opinion, it's wrong for Amazon and Google to advertise products to you based on previous purchases or topics you've researched, butit's perfectly fine for Apple to sell people the same device, over and over, in ever so slightly different shapes. I actually agree with Cook that corporations

holding huge amounts of information on us and their ability to influence us is concerning. But I view Apple's carefully and specifically crafted skill toinfluence people to buy the same, expensive product with, at times, little more than a different shape or color just as disconcerting.

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