Apple CEO Tim Cook is playing the morality card — slamming rivals for trading off privacy and security for revenue, while taking the opportunity to reiterate that his own company does none of that.
At a Washington D.C. dinner hosted by EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center – held for the Apple chief as a Champion of Freedom – Cook managed to fire thinly veiled potshots at rivals such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, which all rely on an ad-based business model that revolves around the massive amounts of data that these companies collect from their users, while the users themselves get the services without paying a fee.
"Like many of you, we at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security," Cook said. "We can, and we must provide both in equal measure. We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy. The American people demand it, the constitution demands it, morality demands it."
Cook did not specifically mention any names, but it is clear who he was talking about. He pointed to Silicon Valley, where he said some of the world's most successful companies have built their reputation and fortune on "lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information."
"They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it," Cook said. "We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be."
Cook said customers should be given the reins over how their user information is used. That's particularly crucial in this day and age, when all sorts of sensitive user information regarding our health, finances and homes, is stored in technological devices ranging from smartphones to smart thermostats.
"You might like these so-called free services, but we don't think they're worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose," he said. "And we think someday, customers will see this for what it is."
While services such as Google's Gmail, Photos and Drive are free, Cook said they actually come at a "very high cost," that is, handing over ones privacy to a corporation believed to have ties with government surveillance agencies.
Earlier this year, Google's own Sundar Pichai took a shot at Apple, whom he criticized for charging customers high fees while driving down its own business costs. In an interview with Forbes, Pichai said it would be "irresponsible" to sell everything at expensive prices, the same way Apple's iPhones are sold at high financial costs. He also defended Google's products, saying that its users "love" them.
"Users use our services by choice. They are very loved products. We have many many products that have more than 1 billion users. They provide a lot of value. And we provide many of these services for free," Pichai said.
"It's a bit irresponsible to say everything should be many hundreds of dollars [as most Apple products are]. We have figured out a way to provide important services to users responsibly. I think that matters. Most users if you ask them, they are comfortable with how it works."
Photo: Mike Deerkoski | Flickr
