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Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

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Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#151

Post by tinus_hn »

arrosenberg wrote: post #149
tinus_hn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple controls slightly less than 20% of the global smartphone market and has been bypassed by Samsung in market share. It’s just ridiculous to claim they do not have significant competition, they have less than 20% while that other over 80% is all Android. Even in their biggest market, the US, they barely pass 50% and the rest is all one very successful competitor. Pretty significant competition.

The global smartphone market is irrelevant, since the majority of global non-Apple purchases are cheap, one-time hardware purchases with low margin and no long tail revenue. Apple absolutely dominates the market in revenue (~65%) generated on those devices (which is recurring and high margin). They control the only roads that matter, and they only have 1 real competitor in Android. That's not a competitive market by…

They have a real competitor, yet it’s not a competitive market.

Remember how Microsoft had 95% market share and how they were actively and overtly abusing that position to embrace, extend and extinguish any threats? Everyone was crying antitrust and it never went anywhere. The worst they got was the EU forcing them to put up Windows without Windows Media Player, which then got bought by nobody, and the browser choice pop-up they got rid of after a few years.

If you think anything worse is going to happen to Apple with their 20% market share, or even if you somehow inflate the number to 65%, think again. It’s not going to happen under antitrust law. If anything is going to happen it’s going to be new laws.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#152

Post by arrosenberg »

tinus_hn wrote: post #151
arrosenberg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The global smartphone market is irrelevant, since the majority of global non-Apple purchases are cheap, one-time hardware purchases with low margin and no long tail revenue. Apple absolutely dominates the market in revenue (~65%) generated on those devices (which is recurring and high margin). They control the only roads that matter, and they only have 1 real competitor in Android. That's not a competitive market by…

They have a real competitor, yet it’s not a competitive market. Remember how Microsoft had 95% market share and how they were actively and overtly abusing that position to embrace, extend and extinguish any threats? Everyone was crying antitrust and it never went anywhere. The worst they got was the EU forcing them to put up Windows without Windows Media Player, which then got bought by nobody, and the browser choice…

> They have a real competitor, yet it’s not a competitive market.

Yes, that's completely consistent with the Brandeis view of antitrust. Cartels are not a competitive market.

> Everyone was crying antitrust and it never went anywhere.

Not facts. It resulted in a successful prosecution by the Clinton DOJ, and Microsoft was ordered to breakup in 2000. The company appealed (dragging past the election) and it was settled by the Bush DOJ, which obviously resulted in weaker policies since the Bush lawyers subscribed to the Borkist view of antitrust.

> If you think anything worse is going to happen to Apple with their 20% market share, or even if you somehow inflate the number to 65%, think again. It’s not going to happen under antitrust law. If anything is going to happen it’s going to be new laws.

Guess we will see. Seems to already be happening based on the defensive moves these companies are making in response to more aggressive regulators, but I agree new laws would help move things along. I didn't "somehow" inflate it. I looked at the recurring revenue streams from the app store instead of device sales, because app store revenue is a massive stream of profit, and devices are low-margin commodities.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#153

Post by chii »

kergonath wrote: post #137
chii wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because their primary revenue is from hardware, doesn't mean it isn't attractive to also add extra, uncorrelated revenue sources such as ads and data. Whether they have innovation or not is irrelevant to this.

If the US government (or any, really) makes that unattractive, then I am all for it, regardless of any innovation aspect. It’s like Samsung double-dipping by making its smart TVs gather data about their users. This should be illegal.

oh yes, it should be illegal. Just like people should care about poverty in the world, or should care about the environment and climate change.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#154

Post by chii »

metadat wrote: post #105
chii wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because their primary revenue is from hardware, doesn't mean it isn't attractive to also add extra, uncorrelated revenue sources such as ads and data. Whether they have innovation or not is irrelevant to this.

It is relevant because transitioning from premium into an ad platform is a low-brow-caveman-bottom-of-the-bucket move, only the best one to make once you're out of better options. Truly premium products respect your privacy. It turns out truly premium goods aren't Google, Tesla, and soon won't be Apple, if Tim&co go down this path.

"truly premium" is one of those no-true-scotsman arguments.

The problem is that apple intends to make maximum profit. The premium product can produce that, but if they smell that their customers don't care enough about privacy, they could _also_ sell ads on top of the premium tax. So until people starts dropping iphones because of it, they will proceed.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#155

Post by jefftk »

tinus_hn wrote: post #147
jefftk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don’t need to invade privacy to show ads in a search result, based on that search. That’s how DuckDuckGo survives. DDG does track how you interact with their search results and search ads, same as Google.

DDG does not set a cookie that identifies you and as such has absolutely no way to have your ads or anything else be influenced by what you searched for earlier or what results you clicked on, outside of the single page you get when you search. Check it for yourself using your favorite browsers developer console, there are no cookies, unless you set preferences and if so, the cookie is a very short string that indica…

Good point on the cookies!

> That’s why you only need to search for a car once to get ads for cars for weeks.

I don't think that's right? If you search for things about cars and then click through to a page about cars you'll get tagged with all sorts of advertising cookies, same as if you did that with any other search engine. But I'm pretty sure just searching for something on Google won't affect either (a) what ads you see on future Google searches or (b) what ads you see on non-Google pages around the web.

(Disclosure: I used to work on ads at Google, though not search ads.)

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#156

Post by BbzzbB »

croes wrote: post #114
BbzzbB wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Facebook which is today's scapegoat. They can't buy Beat Saber or Giphy. Microsoft is buying the largest game developer for $70B without skipping a beat.

As of today FB owns Giphy and Beat Saber

UK courts are fighting them over Giphy. US FTC is fighting them over Beat Games (Beat Saber) and Within Unlimited (Supernatural).

I'm not saying FAAMGs should be able to spend hundreds of billions unchecked in consolidating M&A, but this contradiction when no one flinches at Microsoft buying Activision makes it pretty obvious, in my possibly mistaken opinion, that this is no objective process.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#157

Post by justapassenger »

teekert wrote: post #140
justapassenger wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non tracking ads bring very little revenue as ads all about effectiveness. After initial experiments and cool off period you’ll either see more ads, tracking or scaling down of operations due to limited revenue.

Id think a tech blog with tech ads will work better than a tech blog with ads for the outdoor headlamp I ordered weeks ago.

I assume you do understand that you seeing ads for outdoor headlamp you've ordered weeks ago is a proof that you actually have some privacy? Conversion signal (as in - you've purchased the product) didn't reach the ad network, for whatever reason.

Also - what do you think brings more money for the publisher - ad for outdoor headlamp (that you already bought, but still, you're potentially "lucrative" customer, as you are interested in this product) or a same ad for Windows 10 for 3 years, while you run everything on Linux and never touched Windows in your whole life?

"Tech" is a very very broad category. There's a reason why tech sites serve non-tech ads and personalized ads took over internet.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#158

Post by fomine3 »

jefftk wrote: post #132
fezfight wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could always disable them in Firefox both desktop and mobile. So I guess they're both copying Mozilla in this regard.

For decades you've been able to manually disable third party cookies. The place where Apple innovated was in defaults.

I argue IE6 (P3P Policy) was an early great try.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#159

Post by fomine3 »

consumer451 wrote: post #48
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Android can't stop you from installing ad blockers.

I am able to use Firefox Focus to block ads in Safari on iOS. I’ve not had an Android for a while. What additional ad blocking features would I have on Android these days?

Using Edge + adblock addon is like Firefox Focus.

Re: Apple is building an ad empire as its iPhone privacy crackdown weakens rivals

#160

Post by diminish »

zikduruqe wrote: post #87
diminish wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is planning to expand its advertising business significantly by placing more ads directly on users' devices directly, Bloomberg reports. The expansion would include bringing ads to more of Apple's own apps on iPhones and iPads, including Apple Maps. I smile remembering "if you don't pay you're the product" which apple lovers lobbied looking at G users, hinting they payment for extra margins will save them fro…

Remember a long time ago, you'd get cable TV to avoid ads that you see via OTA TV? It's ads all the way down.

Exactly, that was my argument that if eyeballs exist, it will be monetized using ads.
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