this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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IDK why people say they have better privacy: They just settled a lawsuit over evesdroping using Siri. I think they probably have less interest than Google in selling data for advertising, mostly likely using it internally for their ecosystem so they probably come across more privacy focused but I assume they snoop just as much as any other big tech company.
Google don't sell data. The data is what makes them valuable, so it wouldn't make sense. If they did sell data, the other big tech companies would just buy their data to remove their competitive advantage.
What Google actually sells is your attention. Advertisers can target people based on demographic data, things you like, etc, but the advertiser never sees the data used for targeting.
You can use Google and Facebook's Ads Manager sites yourself and see exactly what advertisers see.
On the other hand, Apple mostly keep their collected data for their own ad network. Yes, they have one - it's mostly just used for ads for "recommended" apps in the app store, but last I heard, they have plans to expand it.
Yeah apologies, that's a good point - thanks for adding more context!
No worries - it's a pretty common misconception that tech companies sell data. I've worked on ads systems at big tech companies so I've seen some parts of how it works. The companies are very protective of their data as it's essentially their highest-value asset. Employees can't see any of your data either - it's very tightly locked down, with strict ACLs and audit logging.
Large advertisers generally don't get any special access either - the tools/apps that large advertisers use are mostly the same as what small advertisers / individuals can see and use.