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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

>I'm operating under the assumption that Apple is more privacy friendly than Google under pretty much any circumstance.

I'm curious as to why...?

Because Google is primarily (not solely) an advertising / information company, so there's a financial incentive to sacrifice privacy.

Apple is primarily (not solely) a hardware / product company, so the financial incentives are different.

There's also a stronger history of Apple fighting for user privacy against government requests, etc.

Yes, this. If it's free, you're the product. Same reason I pay for Fastmail.

interesting phrase. did you coin it?

No, think I saw it on here first..but it's a pretty powerful phrase.

I saw it first on this comic: https://www.ethannonsequitur.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/... (not on that site though, I searched for it on Google Images)

My understanding is that Andrew Lewis first said it.

http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#325604...

I fully agree, but I still cynically wonder if there are no insolent companies out there who know that people believe in this sentiment and will make you play PLUS sell your info to 3rd parties.

Yep, I am fun at parties.

>There's also a stronger history of Apple fighting for user privacy against government requests, etc.

Is there ? AFAIK Google has been pretty pro-active in giving as little data to the governments as it legally can.

Or maybe I have been influenced by the PR Google has been doing about this for years.

The general theory is that advertising companies profit from software that decreases privacy.

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