Mark Zuckerberg, on Apple’s and its supporters’ tired and overused “you’re not the customer. You’re the product” tripe.
“A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers,” Zuckerberg says. “I think it’s the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you’re paying Apple that you’re somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper!”
That sound you hear is a nail being hit squarely on the head. If you as a consumer were not Apple’s product, they would not be charging you margins of 40-50%. Add to this the fact that Apple also collects all kinds of information about its customers, and it becomes even more laughable.
Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft – they all see you as just one thing: walking bank accounts. That’s it. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re anything more to them just to justify using their crap.
Why was this published? Who cares what one asshole thinks about another asshole. Let them tweet to each other and be done with it.
BURN!!!
Nice one.
Because Thom needs to take every opportunity to continue his anti-Apple compaign.
“Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft – they all see you as just one thing: walking bank accounts. That’s it. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re anything more to them just to justify using their crap.”
Uh, yeah.. businesses see customers as $$$. Businesses have a goal to earn profits, not to be our friends.
I used to really like OSAlert, but it’s become a place for Thom to push his biases and lack of business knowledge.
this was spot on
I’m not really sure I get you’re post. You agree with Thom. Both of you understand that businesses want to make profits, not friends. I don’t see any contradiction.
I also don’t see any anti-apple bias there. He calls all of them out, not just apple.
Thom makes it sound like there is a problem with businesses seeing its customers as money, and nothing else. If I buy an Apple (or any other) product, I’m buying it to use it, no so that I can feel like Apple likes me..
I think that’s exactly what Thom is saying. He’s rallying against rampant cheer-leading for the company X of your choosing.
That’s how it works, sadly. These people see criticism of Apple, and completely ignore the fact that everyone else receives the exact same criticism in the same damn sentence.
You can’t ever do it right, unless you start kissing Apple’s butt so hard your lips fall off – and even then they’re complain I’m not licking it instead.
The problem, Thom, is that a site about OS news should not be “Thom’s Apple, Google, (whatever), biased opinion of every new item”. I used to like to come here to read OS news, but now it’s reading Thom’s opinion of everything under the sun. Maybe post the news and let people post their own comments, without your take on everything?
Every?
And even if it was? Since when do you own, pay for, and run this site?
I don’t like Zuckerbird or FaceBook yet I’m surprised. I expect somebody like marky to recognize the market place and cuddle up to the loyal apple cultists instead of doing the equivalent of saying the emperor has no clothes. Why is he being so honest and forthright. Risking the ire or the stupid masses? Any opinions on this change in direction from marky?
Actually, being the editor pretty much means he gets to decide what OSAlert is about.
Good luck trying to convince him otherwise.
Thom, you frequently publish articles and/or links that sing the praises of companies you like and don’t with those you don’t like. Similarly, you publish articles and/or links that show how one company bests its competitor in features, price, or market share but don’t do the same when your disliked companies do the same to the companies that you champion.
Those accusing you of anti Apple bias are correct. You publish negative or neutral stories about them. When you do publish a positive, you do so from a source that mitigates the issue or you inject something that attempts to dampen the positive news.
You’re the editor… so run this site how you feel, but we’re just telling you that we’re aware of the bias which you claim doesn’t exist. It does.
I recently submitted a very relevant news article which you rejected for the reasons presented above.
Edited 2014-12-05 18:23 UTC
All lies. Complete and utter lies. Nothing but lies – as usual, from the person who has been harassing OSAlert staff for more than a decade. Who has been caught – multiple times – astroturfing for Apple by signing up multiple accounts on this website. Be grateful I haven’t banned this account, too.
But, let’s just do it again. You have serious issues with the concept of cognitive dissonance. I regularly praise Apple products on this site. Every review of every Apple product I’ve ever done has been nothing but positive. Nothing but positive. I regularly repeat that Apple’s products are usually the best in their respective categories for most people.
But you ignore this, because – as the earlier part of this comment illustrates – you have a problem. Apple is your religion (why would you astroturf, otherwise, right?) so everything about them has to be 100% positive. You focus on any possibly bad thing any OSAlert editor – and specifically Eugenia and I – have ever said, and forget everything else.
It’s entertaining and sad at the same time. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue sending a lot of business Apple’s way because virtually every recommendation I’ve made to any friend or family members led them to iPads, iPhones, and Macs, because they’re usually the best option for most of them.
But hey, continue spreading your lies.
We do not post articles submitted or written by you. This policy was put in place after mutual agreement from the staff, after your continuous and repeated abuse of this site and its editors. Again – be grateful I’m not kicking your astroturfing ass off the site again.
Wildly unlikely that Apple is paying people to promote apple on OSAlert.
Probably not for OSAlert specifically, but they may have contracts to post defences of Apple wherever they come across an opportunity to.
It’s not Thom’s point about making profits that’s a problem it’s his deliberate attempt to mangle the argument in order to create spurious similarities in order to criticise Apple and exonerate business based upon monetising user data.
Of course all businesses want to make money from their customers. Does that make all businesses identical? No – obviously not. Businesses have lots of different business models each of which have implications for it^aEURTMs priorities and behaviour.
The really slippery part of Thom^aEURTMs obscuration of this issue is how he conflates Apple selling premium priced products to a selected segment of the market (a fairly common strategy across many different industries and product sectors) with the entirely different model of giving stuff away free in order to collect user data which can then be used to sell targeted advertising slots to third parties.
He goes as far as saying ^aEUR~Apple also collects all kinds of information about its customers^aEURTM. That^aEURTMs true but in the context of the issue being discussed irrelevant because the following is also true:
Apple renders anonymous almost all that information so it cannot be tracked to a specific individual.
Apple collects vastly less non-anonymous data about the users of it^aEURTMs products than either Facebook or Google.
Apple business is not based upon repackaging the non-anonymous data it holds about it^aEURTMs customers in order to sell products based on that data. Both Facebook and Google do repackage the non-anonymous data and sell it in the form of targeted advertising, in fact doing so is the sole basis of their revenue business.
Apple^aEURTMs customers are the people who buy it^aEURTMs products. This means Apple^aEURTMs primary self survival strategy for it^aEURTMs businesses is keeping those customers, the buyers of it^aEURTMs products, happy and coming back for more. Apple has many strong competitors selling similar products. How high the margins are are on Apple products is irrelevant if the customer is happy to pay Apple^aEURTMs price for their products, which they manifestly are in large numbers.
Google and Facebook^aEURTMs customers are not the people who use their free service but are the companies who buy its targeted advertising product. Google and Facebook must, as condition of survival, collect enough non-anonymous high quality user data in order to continue to attract paying customers for it’s advertising products. It^aEURTMs true that both Facebook and Google are incentivised to make those free services, which are the mechanism to collect the data their business depends upon, as attractive as necessary in order to attract users. But it is also true that both Google and Facebook have managed to secure such market dominance in their respective fields (search and social networking) that there are high barriers to anyone dislodging them. This means that their free services only have to be good enough to prevent a space for competitors developing or to prevent users drifting away.
I think that Apple thinks that privacy is a concern to a significant number of people and that it^aEURTMs business model means it can go further than Google (and by implication Facebook) in terms of protecting privacy and anonymising user data because such non-anonymous user data is utterly trivial in relation Apple^aEURTMs business but is central to Google^aEURTMs business. Apple thus thinks Google^aEURTMs privacy flank can be turned in order to create USP for Apple products.
Well it was Zuckerburg who attempted that (in a very ham-handed way), Thom just agreed.
Anyway, I find myself in the odd position that I agree with almost everything else you said (odd because historically I disagree with just everything you say).
Seriously, even though I still think you have tunnel vision when it comes to anything involving Apple, your argument is spot on. Everything you said is pretty accurate.
Here is the thing though – there is more to it than that.
Just because your business model is rooted in selling your user’s eyeballs to advertisers doesn’t mean you can’t also do good things for those users. In fact, success with this business model actually hinges on you doing good things for those users, because while they may not technically be your customers, their happiness is no less important to your bottom line.
Take search for example. Would you argue that internet search is not a valuable contribution to the market? I don’t mean valuable in terms of financial value, I mean valuable in terms of simply being a useful and productive offering for users to have access to. Why is there no major company selling generalized internet search directly to customers? Why do you think that is?
Do you think there is a vast under-served market of consumers waiting to pay directly for search results? What about email? Cloud storage? I’m not talking about businesses, I’m talking about people.
The reality is if you want to operate at certain scales in the people space revenue through advertising is the only thing that makes any sense, because at those scales there simply would not be enough actual paying customers to finance your operation. Some business models only work at huge scale…
Apple gets around this problem by building in high margins and making do with a smaller customer base. They go after customers who have the extra income to support their operation, and ignore the rest of the market (for the most part). Good for them, I don’t hold it against them at all – but the air up there is pretty thin…
All I’m saying is that this (advertising = bad) mentality is simple-minded and arrogant. The Googles and Facebooks of the world provide valuable services that simply would not be available to the vast majority of consumers otherwise – because at the pricing points that would be required to operate them most people would choose to simply go without… Its a way to deliver products that people want but don’t actually need.
In short I would be happy to see some new monetization strategies emerge, but Apple’s strategy is frankly something that only Apple can get away with – its not some ideal to strive towards. It ignores the other 70% of people who don’t have vast discretionary income to spend on things they don’t actually need.
Agreed. The fact that Google is an advertising company doesn’t make them bad. It’s just a fact that will influence where they go and what you can expect with their products in the future. They will never do anything too egregious to compromise their user’s privacy (depending on your point of view) because eventually they will lose too many users with actions like that.
And you think for example Apple does different? There is money in data, lots of money. Data is the new oil. Just because the data is not collected and used for advertising by the same company doesn’t mean they have no interest in you, your data. In fact the biggest data-dealer, the NSA, does not use your data for advertising. There are much more valuable and profitable things to do with your, our, big data.
Edited 2014-12-06 10:17 UTC
I agree with what you say but what you say doesn’t address all the issues here. In terms of this debate there are two business models one based on selling products to users for a profit and the other attracting users with free services so that you can monetise the data collected about their activities in your free services (obviously if one was discussing something else that breakdown into two simple categories would be too simple but for the purposes of this discussion it suffices).
Both are capable of delivering good end user experiences but Thom has argued that those two business models are essentially the same in terms of their impact on end users. I would disagree.
I think that it is obvious that a business model founded upon collecting non-anonymised user data is limited in what it can offer to end users in terms of anonymising or not tracking their activity. The converse is true for business not based upon collecting non-anonymised user data. That difference may not matter in the real world, maybe people con’t much care about who is collecting or storing their non-anonymised data. But in a post Snowden world I think it is possible that it does concern more people and that means that Apple can trump Google by promising to both collect less data and make it anonymous in a way that is very challenging for Google to match. I expect Apple to push the privacy issue strongly, I would if I were them.
The other way that the ‘monetising user data data and advertising business model’ impacts is in variations in end user experience. If your paying customer is not the main user of your service you can mess around with those services a bit more liberally than you can with the products you actually sell to your paying customers. Especially if you have a very dominant market position that renders competitors to your services weaker. You only have to avoid driving users away. So for example, you can mess around with filling up search result pages with paid ads or insisting that everyone joins Google+ or release enormous numbers of only semi-finished ‘beta’ products, without fearing that your paid customer will be driven away because none of those things actually impacts on your paid customers.
[q]All I’m saying is that this (advertising = bad) mentality is simple-minded and arrogant.[/q}
I don’t think I ever said that. I do think that building a business whose sole source of income is advertising based on user data has consequences.
BTW I think it is gross simplification to simply say that Google is an advertising company. I think the key thing, perhaps the most interesting thing, about Google as a company is that at it’s core it is all about machine learning and algorithmically managed processes. When it’s processes work best is when they are best suited to machine learning and algorithmically managed processes and it tends to do much less well when a process would work best with a high degree of human management and involvement. For example being very good at algorithmically generating a page of relevant search hits but piss poor at dealing with a complaint from someone whose business has been devastated by a seemingly arbitrary and unexpected collapse of it’s search page rank
Google and Facebook collects this information non-anonymous but package it in an anonymous way.
You cannot find the list of people who saw your advertisement, you can only say that you want your product to be visible for young people interested in cars from Florida.
and Apple: http://advertising.apple.com/ro/benefits/#audience – they don’t sell you.
And another thing: they have your music, photographs, location…. all in iTunes.
They had there share of problems with the privacy of there online services.
Actually google and facebook have more manpower and experience in keeping your data private. And because there business model makes them exposed to this kind of risks, they take it more seriously.
“I used to really like OSAlert, but it’s become a place for Thom to push his biases and lack of business knowledge.”
This from someone who signed up as a member only recently.
How any of you can defend Apple or most other big corporations is beyond me. There is such a thing as moralistic business practises you know. This is especially important when you have as many customers are Apple does.
Some of you claim it’s just business as usual despite the near monopolization going on. If Apple’s prices came down, wouldn’t that be good for LOTS OF PEOPLE? Too many people buy their fruity garbage instead of putting food on the table as it is. The Apple cult has always disgusted me.
A meaningless statement. That could be said of any company. “If BMW’s prices came down, wouldn’t that be good for LOTS OF PEOPLE? . Yes and no. Great if you want to buy a BMW cheaply, bad if you want the BMW business model and premium brand to continue to prosper.
Apple makes high margins on their products because they can. Other device makers would love to make high margins on their products but they can’t. The reason Apple can and the other device OEMs cannot is because the business model of Apple is different to the business model of the other OEMs.
Apple’s is a classic premium brand business model and going down market, dropping prices and margins in order to secure a higher volume of a lower value added market is the classic way to destroy a premium brand.
OK – show me some data to back up that ridiculous and emotionally hyperbolic statement
Then just don’t look. If you don’t buy or use Apple products why pay any attention to what’s happening on the Apple side of the fence.
By the way I assume your use of the term ‘Apple cult’ is the usual shorthand for ‘The unusually high level of enthusiasm and brand loyalty exhibited by Apple customers’, when the short hand term ‘cult’ is expanded to expose it’s real meaning it reveals just how clever and interesting the Apple business model and process really is.
But you just agreed with him?!?
Apple has never said that anything you do when using their products, or that anything you store on their servers when using their services (pictures, movies, data) will become THEIR property, to use and do with as they see fit. Among those is using it as advertising to produce revenue for them. Facebook does this, it’s in their Terms of Service. Of course, some will say Tim Cook is lying through his teeth when he says that Apple doesn’t collect any information on its customers, that is to be expected, so this argument will go on and on.
And regarding what Apple charges, it’s a free world and market, they can charge what they want if people will pay the price. If you don’t like their prices, don’t buy their products, it’s quite simple. If you don’t like the price of a Lamborghini, don’t buy one! The price of a Lamborghini by itself doesn’t make it “crap”. Please. The laws of supply and demand will take care of things if their prices get too high, people will stop buying. Price controls are never good, is that what Thom wants?
I personally like the “crap” that Apple sells, and trust the company, within sensible limits, while I don’t post or store anything on Facebook that I don’t want to end up in the wrong hands, appear in public, or want to maintain ownership of.
Edited 2014-12-05 12:21 UTC
Blatant lie. From https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms, first sentence in section 2, Sharing Your Content and Information:
Read the rest of it. You grant them a license to share your data with others, because, you know, that’s the only reason to post information on Facebook. And you can revoke that license at any time by simply deleting your data.
Interestingly enough, the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the major technology companies are all more or less exactly the same. The claims that one company will care more about you than the other is just… Naive as fuck.
The idea that you don’t understand the difference between an advertising-based business model and product sales one is mind boggling.
The idea that the only way for a company to turn your data into profits is via advertising is mind boggling.
Feel free to provide some real life examples. And no, citing the NSA is not a valid one.
You know that is not the issue under discussion. This has nothing to do with care, or morals or ethics, of who is ‘good’ and who is ‘evil’. That’s all childish stuff that is utterly useless for analysing how the world works.
The issue is about the impact that different business models have on companies, their culture, their behaviour and on the way that those things affects end users/customers.
Put simply if a company’s entire revenue stream is based upon a product that requires the collection and storage of non-anonymised user data then that company is limited in how far it can go in collecting less data and handling data in an anonymised fashion.
I also think that companies ends up treating paying customer differently to non-paying users (note I said differently and not better/worse) but that’s a separate issue to the issue of user data collection.
An incredibly convoluted sentence, just because even you have to admit all of these companies collect the exact same data under the exact same terms and conditions and privacy policies.
And that’s the crux. Business models are irrelevant because the moment American companies have your data, it’s done, compromised, and beyond your control, whether we’re talking Google, Facebook, or Apple.
At a certain point during a rainstorm, once all your clothes are fully soaking wet, down to your underwear, more rain doesn’t make you any wetter. With Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft, your underwear is equally wet, and claiming that one is wetter than the other is not only untrue, it’s PR bullshit that serves us only one purpose: separating the corporate cheerleaders and astroturfers from smart people.
Edited 2014-12-07 15:52 UTC
A “blatant lie” as you put it. (Nicely tactful terminology and promotes polite discussion I might add). Read this article from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2014/07/24/terms-of-service-secrets/
I read it. Here’s the second paragraph in item 1:
Emphasis added. This agrees precisely with what I said. Contrast with what you claimed:
“You still own all of your content” vs “becomes THEIR property” (original emphasis) – see the difference?
But even if a random article on Mashable didn’t correctly interpret the actual terms of service, you do understand that the terms of service are what govern your use of Facebook, and not a blog by Sylvan Lane, right?
OK, perhaps “blatant lie” is too strong a phrase – I’ll withdraw it, and concede that you simply made an honest but egregious error that harmfully cast aspersions against Mr. Zuckerberg in a post titled “The truth hurts Mr. Zuckerberg”. Agreed?
Well, what are they going to “use” it for? To drum up donations to their favorite charity? LOL If “drumming up donations” means making money and “their favorite charity” means the company, then yes.
And I did not in any way cast apersions, demean, badmouth, or belittle Mr. Zuckerberg in any way, don’t be dramatic, I simply disagree with his statements. I am a Facebook user for heaven’s sake, if I thought he was a bad person, I wouldn’t use his service. Lets’ keep the personal thing out of it.
Edited 2014-12-07 13:54 UTC
“I think it’s the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you’re paying Apple that you’re somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper!” That sound you hear is a nail being hit squarely on the head. If you as a consumer were not Apple’s product, they would not be charging you margins of 40-50%.
Uh, what? That makes no sense at all. How the hell does charging high margins somehow make you a product? Being Apple’s customer doesn’t mean that they’re your best friend and they have nothing but your best interest at heart. It’s absolutely true that Apple is trying to get every dime they can out of their customers, and they use some tactics that I personally find pretty repulsive to do so. I don’t care for Apple and I don’t own any Apple products other than a 160GB Ipod Classic and that’s solely because I couldn’t find another player with similar storage capacity and capabilities when I bought it several years ago. I’m not defending Apple at all. But a product is what you sell. A customer is who you sell the product to. If the people buying Apple’s overpriced merchandise are the product, then who the hell are they being sold to?
Pointing out that Apple charges high margins doesn’t weaken the argument about users/purchasers being products, it strengthens it. If the Apple purchasers were Apple’s products, they’d be much more likely to charge LOWER margins. Charging lower margins would bring them more purchasers, which would benefit them if the purchaser were the product.
That’s why Google can get rich charging nothing for search, GMail, etc. Search and GMail aren’t Google products. They’re Google manufacturing equipment. Ford uses an assembly line to create cars, which they then then sell to their customer, the car buyers. Google uses search and mail to generate user attention and information, which they then sell to their customer, the advertisers. What analogous behavior does Apple engage in? Sure, there’s probably a few things you can bring up that fit the bill, but how much do they contribute to Apple’s bottom line?
It’s absolutely fine and absolutely correct to point out that being Apple’s customer doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to treat you any better than Google does for being their product. But to claim that high margins means you’re a product is one of the most asinine things I’ve ever read on this site. It seems to indicate a complete lack of understanding of how a market works and what common terms mean.
You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
This is of course true, but their legions of fans usually do claim that Apple only has the customers’ best interest at heart. When they do something bad, it’s either because it’s good for you (less confusing, etc.) or it’s Someone Else’s Fault (AT&T, until proven otherwise, and then it turns out it was good for you all along).
These fans are the exact same that keep harping on about ‘you’re the product’.
Edited 2014-12-05 14:31 UTC
Apple does indeed sell ads to people on their devices; no different than Google or Facebook. The big difference is you pay upfront, so Apple can afford to be less… Obvious about it.
http://advertising.apple.com/benefits/
http://advertising.apple.com/ad-showcase/
https://developer.apple.com/iad/
http://advertising.apple.com/
The difference between Apple and Facebook/Google is the fact that Apple sells both the products and the ads. Google/Facebook give pretty much everything away from free, and the expectation is you’ll see ads – and they’re honest about it.
What Apple does give away is either an ad itself, a vehicle for ads – or something which can be upgraded. And when you pay for Apple products it hardly ‘aligns’ them with you because you paid to play; it simply means you’re locked in to their ecosystem. You’ve paid $640 to get apple ads on apple phones on apple-approved apps unless you buy the products and apps apple advertised on apple phones using apple apps.
There are no ad-supported apple services. They have an ad framework that app developers can use, that’s it. Clearly that’s not the same as Facebook or Google, whose core products are all ad supported.
> They have an ad framework that app developers can use
Same at Android. App developers can use it but not need to.
> whose core products are all ad supported.
“Ad supported” means? How is that, optional ad support for apps via a framework buildin into the core product, now different from say iOS? Its not as you confirm in your previous sentence.
Edited 2014-12-06 10:29 UTC
Perhaps if you don’t know what ad supported means you shouldn’t be involved in the discussion. Google services for consumers are supported by ads rather than direct payment. Apple services are supported by their hardware sales rather than ads. Simple as that.
Too bad I use Adblock and I use it since its inception.
All true. Yet, whose wallets get opened and what key is required to open them matters a lot.
With Apple, the wallet opened is mostly mine (end user). The key to opening it is to convince me their product is pretty, that the hardware works well and the installed software does what I want.
Facebook, the wallet opened are mostly those of advertisers. The key to opening it is to have me visit the site and then convince advertisers they can target me and get me to buy their stuff.
Google is a bit more complex because their main business is like Facebook, but they also branch into different areas with different wallets (like Chromebooks for schools).
Microsoft is mainly small business and enterprise wallets.
I think it matters where the money comes from, even if Apple and Microsoft started to see they can grab some of the advertisement wallets as well. Not because they care about us, but because their main focus and “innovations” tend to center around where they get their main income from.
Can you clarify why you believe this is not also the key to Google and Facebook’s business plan? After all, if you don’t log into Facebook often, if you don’t purchase an Android phone or use Google search, then you see no ads and they receive no revenue from you.
The key to all business plans is revenue – and to build revenue, you must build “pretty” products that work well and do what is wanted, regardless of whether the revenue comes directly from consumers and businesses, or from advertisers, or from donors.
… you don’t have a clue about the margins of everyday products.
Here, take a look at this: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/20-products-giant-markups-115730856.h…
And yes, companies want to make money, news at 11. There is nothing new here Thom, grow up for Pete’s sake…
Interesting!
I think you should still distinguish between those who make money on hardware and those who want you to sell a service.
Apple makes money (mostly) on hardware. Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc … what do they sell? Software/services.
Who profits the most from your personal data? Apple? I don’t think so.
Apple is also in the business of selling advertising. It doesn’t matter who makes more money doing it, your data is equally important to everyone in that area.
I think it does matter, being the personal data a core business to both google and facebook but not to Apple.
Why?
Every corporation – every single one – must generate income or die – from selling products and services, from advertising revenue, and / or from donations.
The mix of income a corporation chooses as its business model doesn’t make it “good” or “bad”. The ethics (or lack thereof) that it exercises in operating its business is the key discriminator.
I can sell quality hardware (good) or dangerous junk (bad). I can present relevant, respectful advertising (good) or abuse my customer’s trust (bad). I can use donations efficiently for the purpose for which they were donated (good) or mislead my patrons (bad).
If you want to judge a company, start with its ethics in practice from the boardroom to the janitor. Everything else is just noise.
Is there such a thing as a corporation with ethics?
Yes.
A corporation tends to adopt the ethics of its primary officers and board. I’m aware of many that take their responsibilities very seriously.
Don’t believe every cynic you meet on the Internet.
You could not be any more wrong about the Google/Facebook business model. The way Google and Facebook make ALL of their money is to sell user data to advertizers.
Users are a product that are sold to advertizers. Period. Facebook is especially egregious in this regard, which makes it so baffling that you’d be so obtuse as to agree with their sentiment.
well said!
and your argument is that Apple not has interest in your data, in a profile of you, in you? Because they are “not evil”? lol.
Of course all of them see us as walking bank accounts, that much is a given. But, how does that void the fact that Apple’s business model is making me want to pay (too much) for their products, and on the other side Facebook’s and Google’s business model is selling my data to 3rd parties? With that given, who is more likely to screw me over?
I’m not sure whether it was intentional, but I think you’ve quite brilliantly summed up one of the major quandaries of the Internet age.
What do you value more: control over your personal data or your money?
Your question seems posed rhetorically (I could be misreading), but I’m genuinely interested to know what you think the answer should be. *This* is the question implicitly posed by Mark Zuckerberg’s comment.
The myth he’s trying to dispel is that value as a customer is uniquely linked to the amount of money you explicitly pay.
Or you could ask it another way;
What do you want to be: a product to be sold, or a resource to be mined?
Most people end up being both at the end of the day, whether they realize it or not.
Edited 2014-12-05 19:36 UTC
As a company with a platform for both, like iOS/Android/WP are, you probably like to enable both ways and get your share when this are turned into hard dollars.
I don’t really think there is an answer there that should be.
The options of your question are extreme, but my own answer is very pragmatic – I mind my privacy, but I’m not a hermit nor I want to wrestle with stuff while doing what I want, so I can live with something in between.
I don’t think he is trying to dispel anything, to me it sounded more like a variant on the fox talking about the grapes. You know the one – it is sour anyway? Was that not a nail on the head or what
They don’t sell your data to third parties. It’s much more valuable when they keep it to themselves.
It’s when considered as a response to this kind of bullshit that Zuckerberg’s statement makes sense.
Oh yes they do, and they do it real-time.
They (at least Google) are not selling your data to third parties. If they did, they’d lose their strategic advantage in the advertising market. What they do is build a profile of you themselves, group you with a few hundred thousands people, then sell the profile overview for people to place ads.
Nobody argues that Apple doesn’t want their consumer’s $$$. The distinction between Apple and Google’s business models is quite stark and Thom is being dishonest to suggest it is otherwise.
Apple sells a product for lots of $$$. The consumer must purchase this product with their own money in order to use it.
Google provides ‘free’ services to consumers and then sells their consumer’s data points to advertisers to make $$$.
Both companies want $$$. Neither company is an ally to the consumer, but to suggest that Apple’s consumers are its product is simple minded at best.
Bullshit. Apple’s got their own advertising thing on iOS, and the coupling of iTunes (a store) to everything else is more of the same.
Of course the weirdness and incompatibilities between Apple and everything else also engenders the secterism that makes Apple fanboyism so much more prevalent than any other corporate cult.
Zuckerberg is a real twat. He can complain all he wants about margins or business models he wants. There is one slight difference. The price you pay for Apple products also pays for a considerable amount of research and development and turns Apple into a profitable long term proposition. As for the data they gather on their customers: at least they do not sell them to third parties you as a user does not have influence on…
Having been involved in the development of a few consumer electronics products you should be aware that the standard markup is typically 400% over the BOM. if the Bill of Materials is $25 the cost is typically $100.
Zuckerberg is, in essence, saying he either wants apple to either change their business model, or use cheaper components. I have some strong requests for him regarding Facebook but I don’t think he is going to listen to me any more that Cook should to him…
But that isn’t the actual margin of the product, that is a back of the napkin kind of thing that doesn’t account for marketing overhead, distribution costs, supply and demand effects, writeoffs, etc. etc. – those things are considered part of that markup when in reality those are all variable expenses, not fixed.
I’m not disagreeing – just pointing out that a product with a 400% margin over the BOM costs in reality can end up with an actual margin ranging anywhere from there all the way down to a negative margin, depending on a wide variety of factors…
Apple’s actual operating margin (which I think is more relevant) is about 30%. It used to be closer to 50%, but hasn’t been for while now. They do command premium pricing, but they sell premium products with premium components (like you said), and spend heavily in advertising and distribution.
Its their strategy of selling high volume without appearing to compromise on pricing and quality that sets them apart, not really their margin. There margins are good, but not exceptional anymore.
If you as a consumer were not Apple’s product, they would not be charging you margins of 40-50%
What a nonsensical thing to say. When you buy a roll of toilet paper, are you the product or is the product the toilet paper? Now say you get a roll of toilet paper for free, or at cost, but it is printed with advertising. You really don’t understand the difference there?
Apple makes money on hardware. That’s the reason behind the margins. Google makes money on advertising. They pushed Android for free because that’s how they get the market. Once they are confident in having the market they will push more and more advertising on their users. Same thing happened with all their other services. Google search used to have only very unobtrusive ads. Then they dominated the market and now there are many more, and more intrusive ones. Youtube used to have only very subtle ads. Then they dominated the market and now the ads are incredibly intrusive and take over the content. If you don’t think the same will happen with Android you are dreaming.
And Google is making sure that the core android is getting less and less useful without their services, to make any future fork harder.
Edited 2014-12-06 06:01 UTC
I actually would be happy with heavily discounted toilet paper with adverts, as long as it is not sandpaper, adverts are not all bad.
I’ll wipe my bum on an advert any day.
It would take my attention away from the task at hand anyway.
When you buy a hobby magazine or visit a hobby website I am not unhappy with the hobby related adverts.
Do not buy Apple and do not use facebook.
Build your own PC, use GNULinux.
Do not use google but swisscows.ch ducksuckgo ixquick.
Have your own website/emial.
There are enough alternatives and addons to avoid being tracked.
The problem is too many people being too convenient/lazy or not smart enought to see the advantage of alternatives, there is alway a reason to march with the mass.
But, you do not need to!
This is not practical in many situations (ditching Google).
For academic searches, at least, Google search yields higher quality results (due to Google books and scholar) than, say, DuckDuckGo.
Ditching Google calendar/email/drive/plus is easy, but I still regard Google search as the best search engine, hands down.
Then use startpage.com or ixquick.com. It’s the same Google search engine but without tracking.
None of that is “trackproof” by any stretch. All any of those do is give the user a false sense of security.
The existence of alternative software & services doesn’t make them magically any better than what the masses are already using. Many times going against the status quo doesn’t relieve you of anything, it just causes more difficulty for you.
My advice to anyone is use what works best for you. And, don’t be dumb or naive enough that you’ve actually convinced yourself one thing is truly any safer to use than the other.
“ilovebeer” doesn’t that say all we want to know.
Most alternatives cover up about 98% of what users need. I agree that it is ridiculous that I need about 7 addons in Firefox to stop the biggest part of tracking.
Still it is always better than silently accept being misused.
What’s a GNULinux? Is it made by Apple? If not, it sucks. If so, why isn’t it being named properly like iGNULinux?
Thom Halwerda criticizing Apple products and prices? wow. Didn’t see that coming! I thought you were Apple products lover. O.o
And that is why Apple is pushing in on a trillion dollar market cap and Facebook and Googles business are basically flat with almost no more growth to be had.
Zuck don’t understand Apple or why people love Apple and why they are loyal to Apple.
Yes everyone collects info on their customers. The point is, who depends to that info to keep their business afloat? And who doesn’t.
Google and FB will sell that info to who knows who, and as their growth flattens they have to look even longer and farther for people to sell to!
Selling to them is child game.
I’m sure they not there for the trill of it.
What baffles me most is that at 2014 this un-inviting monologue still persist.
one word: Jaron Lanier
it is something that Jaron Lanier advocate for some time and he got the point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpdDtK5bVKk
after watching this you will see that what Thom think… does not matter (as almost always)