If Apple decided to downsize and focus on their core competency, which part of the company do you think they would deem essential to their business? I am sure they make decent money on all their stuff but Apple has also taken a public stance on privacy and their devices aren’t seemingly backdoored as seen in the LEAs trying to get help unlocking them and being told by Apple that they can’t help.
Look it all comes down to trust and I see way fewer reasons to trust Google than Apple. Both deserve a baseline measure of mistrust, but Google has all the incentive to spy on you while Apple has little to none. And when it comes to investigations of “why do you have this data in the first place?” Google’s answer is “we need it to advertise” while Apple’s can only be “we need it for this specific service” and if they fail to show why, they are liable. Google and Facebook have a virtually identical business model: collect, aggregate, advertise. If you don’t trust Facebook, why would you trust Google?
> dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company's iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations
If you are referring to FBI-Apple dispute, if apple is complying with Chinese government, it will comply with USA government. That is how things are.
I'm not defending google, far away from it. They are not much better but they protect user data exactly because apple make fun of them. They now do extreme measures just to protect the privacy so they will not destroy their reputation even more.
Look it all comes down to trust and I see way fewer reasons to trust Google than Apple. Both deserve a baseline measure of mistrust, but Google has all the incentive to spy on you while Apple has little to none. And when it comes to investigations of “why do you have this data in the first place?” Google’s answer is “we need it to advertise” while Apple’s can only be “we need it for this specific service” and if they fail to show why, they are liable. Google and Facebook have a virtually identical business model: collect, aggregate, advertise. If you don’t trust Facebook, why would you trust Google?