Facebook published a blog post detailing how iOS 14 will have a negative impact on its ad business since Apple’s upcoming update will ask users for permission before allowing companies like Facebook from collecting user data through Apple’s device identifier.
Given the impact the policy will have on businesses’ ability to market themselves and monetize through ads, we’re sharing how we’re addressing iOS 14 changes and providing recommendations to help our partners prepare, while developers await more details on this policy.
While we may not all agree on which companies we dislike the least – Google, Microsoft, Apple, whatever – I’m pretty sure we can all agree we hate Facebook. So sit back, relax, and smile as you read through this.
So, the chips are finally down. On one side of the ring, we have the tech companies that make money by “monetizing” collected user data (Google and Facebook), and the other side of the ring we have tech companies that make money by selling stuff for money (Apple and Sony) with a business interest in stopping the aforementioned “monetization” if it makes for a standout feature in their products. For example, in the latest WWDC, Apple had a special segment called “Privacy” detailing new iOS and MacOS privacy features. Google I/O didn’t have such a segment for Android.
The question is: Where is Microsoft? They seem to be somewhere in the middle at the moment. But with Apple flaunting their privacy features, Microsoft will have to come clean eventually and answer the following question: Is Windows 10 sold for money or “monetized”? And if Windows 10 is sold for money and not “monetized”, why doesn’t it offer the same “privacy” features that iOS and MacOS offer?
In the middle? Microsoft make almost no money from new buyers., It is all preinstalled baby, And according to King.com it atcuallt hurt the brand to be included in the new start menu. Exposure=/=desire. Their user base have been going down either way, so it might just be shifting the blame. But it think there is something to it,
Excuse me? I had to pay around 100 euros for my OEM DSP copy of Windows 10 (before also buying an OEM DSP copy of Windows 8.1 after realizing that I am not a “rolling-release” type of person). And even major OEMs like Dell don’t get truly their Windows licenses completely free-of-charge, they still pay something. Sure, Microsoft gave a promotional upgrade to existing Windows 7 and 8.1 users, but that’s it. For new computers, Windows 10 is a paid product like Windows 7 or 8.1 was. I am still expected to buy a Windows 10 license if I build a new PC (or buy a laptop with FreeDOS, which is the reason I had to buy my Windows 10 and 8.1 licenses BTW), and Microsoft DOES make money from new buyers and new computers.
Which brings the question: If Windows 10 is a paid product, why does it need to be “monetized” with ads and user data collection? Microsoft will have to answer that question as Apple goes all-in on privacy. At least Google is clear with their intentions.
Shareholders. The 1 sin of capitalism: Turning down an opportunity to make a buck.
Windows gets bundled with hardware by the OEM, and the OEM is the real customer.
Next, MS needs to build sets for AI training, and ads of dubious value are the best way to get people to agree to being surveilled.
I could, and do, ask the same question about iOS. It’s full of ads and not just for Apple services, which get annoying enough. Open the App Store and search for the app you want. Is the first result the app you were looking for? Usually it’s not, it’s a damned ad for something you didn’t want! Apple pull the same crap, they just do it a bit differently so it doesn’t feel as much like they’re using ads for money. Make no mistake however, they are doing just that.
I agree with this – but I wonder how much MS is exploring their options regarding their targeted buyers.
It used to be OEMs who would preinstall their software on their hardware. That model has been declining, while less expensive alternative hardware platforms, combined with much cheaper software alternatives (principally, Android/ARM) have been eating away at their market share.
Now the Windows team is under Microsoft’s hardware division, emulating Apple’s approach to product development. Some saw this a minor internal management decision, but I wonder if it might signal a broad change in strategy. Of course, they aren’t going to announce something like that as long as they have their OEM market to serve, but I’m on the look out for an inflection point. Watching some of their top OEMs bulk up their support for desktop Linux (thinking of Lenovo in particular, but also HP to a lesser extent) has been awe inspiring, and MS could also be responding to those types of movements.
Luckily for MS, there really is no viable alternative traditional computing platform to compete with Windows just yet. If Desktop Linux could ever get out of it’s own way, or some top developer could replace the user space system, like someone did with Android on mobile, maybe they’d become viable. For now, MS has a lot of time to stealth try out new strategies. (Linux is WAY better than it was years ago, especially platforms like Pop! OS, but there are still too many caveats and addendum, and things that just don’t work quite as nicely as they need to).
All that said, Windows 10 is a fracking mess – just incredibly unpleasant to use as a daily driver for any kind of real work, lacking in any kind of reasonable security subsystem necessitating Defender, and other power/performance sapping bloatware, and lacking in any real package manager/installer. Even their recent decision to restore a crappy driver distribution system isn’t quite right. They have a lot to do to make it an attractive option against really, everything and anything else.
That is an interesting detail. That makes a lot of sense if MS considers ARM, or something like ARM, is the future. ARM has proven to be a territorial mess, and there isn’t a single ARM platform the way there is an x86 platform.
Of course, it could also mean Windows is maintenance only, like Solaris, and drivers are the one thing that is going to get updated.
Desktop Linux is so close. It’s been good for years, but now the apps are starting to catch up. 🙂 MS Office and services are the last stone which needs give way.
It will say, making Linux a great desktop OS will probably irritate a lot of the *nix old timers and bench racers. It will also require work creating GUI tools to admin desktops and replicating all of the centralized admin tooling Windows has.
Apple did something similar. They took Mach, BSD bits, and other FOSS utils and wrote their own display system, Quartz.
Apple did experiment with using the Linux kernel instead of the Mach kernel in the time before the NeXT acquisition. I can’t find the article since it’s buried by all of the “Top Linux Distros Which Look Like MacOS” articles.
Oddly enough, FreeBSD probably would have been a better platform for building a desktop OS then Linux. Their hardcore commitment to not breaking APIs or ABIs, integrated userland, and dealing with multiple 3rd-party library versions is more inline with the needs of a desktop OS.
Your mother had a flat forehead too.
Are you insulting yourself? 😕
Because people scream bloody murder when security features are added, even those who should know better. Most people don’t want security or privacy. Getting all of their personal data
stolensold to the highest bidder is a feature.Flatland_Spider,
With all due respect that’s not an accurate characterization. We absolutely do support security and privacy. We want security measures designed to inform and empower owners. What’s not acceptable are security measures designed to deliberately hinder owners with the intention of vendor locking and enforcing anti-competitive measures.
I don’t believe he was referring to visitors of this site so much as the average user ; i.e. the people who don’t choose a good password (or write it on a post-it) and then complain about their account getting hacked when their pass was 12345.
anevilyak,
It doesn’t matter, having the ability to sideload doesn’t mean all owners would use it. If the owner is going out of their way to do it and the company is explicitly going against their owner interests by blocking owners and competition, that is not defensible. A company can and should put warnings up, but at the end of the day the owner’s rights need to be respected and they should be finding ways to work with owners rather than against them. I hope that in the long run legislation catches up to nefarious uses of technology that control owners deny us competition.
I was referring to some visitors of this site. Not Alfman. 🙂
Some people forget we, technologists, are a minority (20%), and we need to be good shepherds by not leading the flock into danger (80%). Some sacrifices are harder to accept then others, but we do need to think about the greater good when it comes to security and privacy. We often forget the 80% who just want to use a tool to accomplish something without being a computer expert.
If that doesn’t do anything for you, think of my stress levels since I have to run a network and try to keep people safe. 😀
As for the other people… Yes, those people. The people who don’t use 2FA because they might lose their phone or it’s too much work. The people who still post on Facebook. The people who use Google Chrome because Google know what they’re doing. The people who don’t care about the 10th security breach today because “They don’t have anything worth stealing”. The people who get mad because they can’t install their favorite piece of malware.
There was a skit some where about how people don’t care about their data. Let’s see if I can remember it.
Person A: We need to look at security. We don’t want to have a security breach.
Person B (eating a sandwich): Why? No one cares.
Person A: People care. Name one incident where the company wasn’t affected.
Person B: Equifax.
Person A: Okay, fair, but name another one.
Person B (eating a sandwich): . Google is a giant data collection agency, and Facebook straight up sells people’s data.
Person A (looking defeated): ….
I wish I could remember what that was. I want to say Eric Andre was somehow involved.
You’ve done a great job of explaining your position, and it’s reasonable. We differ on the solution to the problem, but we agree users rights should be respected.
I think we should all ditch the corporations and move to a community supported OS because capitalist institutions are irredeemably corrupt due to their very nature. 🙂 I don’t want to negotiate with hostage takers.
As for my use of an iPhone and a MacBook Pro, I need to get work done, and those are the best options available.
Anyway…
However, others have kneejerk reactions to the slightest hint of inconvenience, and they ignore the reality of modern times for whatever reasons.
Sometimes things really are implemented poorly (SELinux), and that gets discovered with use. Sometimes they get fixed, and sometimes we have to learn to live with them (SELinux).
Sometimes people have valid criticisms because they have more domain experience then the authors, and there are valid scenarios that weren’t considered.
Then there are times when people complain about something because it’s different or because their pet feature was killed because it was a hazard for the 80% of people who have better things to do then be technology experts.
Like it or not, most people do not work, or want to work, in the technology field, and we need to build systems for them.
Wow, I suspected corporate bullshit but this is corporate whining. Impressive. Let’s just hope that now, Apple does not turn into the next Facebook, now that they will provide supposedly anonymous ad tracking data.
Facebook should be sold to a 2nd world country and buried. Nothing productive has come of the pattfom since 2009. Add to that: Twitter. But noone wants to buy it. It runs at a loss every year (how that is even possible eludes me
The conmpany is valued at billions yet has negative return on investment,, Yet people keep byuing.
Yeah sure, a site that makes money out of content they didn’t create “should” be sold. Guess what, the owners have every reason not to sell, and nobody can force them to sell. Much like YouTube, Facebook is a inexhaustible goldmine. Twitter not so much, since it’s a place for people to rant at each other and nobody looks at the ads.
The stock market is just a raw speculation market. All those espoused societal benefits is just marketing. Don’t fall for it. Twitter’s product is their stock, not their service.
This.
These platforms run at a loss because the real value is in being able to publish propaganda, but that value vanishes if it is formally admitted on a balance sheet, so they continue to collect money.
I hope you know what countries are considered 2nd world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World
I believe US government tries to do the opposite.
WHere do I start….
“First, we will not collect the identifier for advertisers (IDFA) on our own apps on iOS 14 devices. ”
That’s just a Unique ID… They say nothing else about everything else that’s identifiable about you that they collect.
“We believe this approach provides as much certainty and stability that we can provide our partners at this time. We may revisit this decision as Apple offers more guidance.”
Typical Legal-speak. Certainty and stability as to what? They mentioned their partners… NOT the end user. even in their legal speak, The end user is nothing more than chattel.
IMO, Facebook can cry me a river. LOL Publicly traded Mega companies, think and act the same in my book… at the whims of the shareholders, NOT for the customer. SO I’ll do just as Thom suggested and , ” Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.”
So what’s the impact on Facebook, given that every user is logged into the app anyway as so is already known?
winter,
Indeed. Obviously any app can use it’s own unique ids. Maybe somebody can clue me in, but I would guess the main value in using the unique id assigned by apple is that it provides a common key across apps. Without that it could makes it harder to match up accounts.
For advertising companies like google and facebook, they want to track users and manage advertising across apps. I for one don’t care for that at all. But I can think of other use cases for a tracking id that are less nefarious, such as a publisher uploading stats to a unified scoreboard for all their games.
There are probably ways to work around the lack of an apple user id, but it wouldn’t be as straitforward.
Apple is neutering Facebook’s spyware.
“While we may not all agree on which companies we dislike the least – Google, Microsoft, Apple, whatever – I’m pretty sure we can all agree we hate Facebook.”
Fantastic!
For once I completely agree with you Thom!
No, not everyone hates Facebook. I do not. Why should I?
Do you what is the Facebook’s business model? What this company sells?
Knowing Apple, they want a cut or are building their own solution for mobile ads business, or are planning to do both.
This is all well and good, and I’m happy about this, provided Apple don’t exempt themselves from this same permission requirement. They did try to get into the ad business a few years back (remember iAd, anyone?) and couldn’t compete. This could simply be a first step in making darn sure they have that competitive edge by force. Given their increasing desire to literally control everything and anything on their platform, coupled with their obvious move towards a service-based shift in their approach, I’m not so sure this won’t turn into something far more sinister a few years down the line. When combined with their contact tracing technology, supposedly only for medical purposes (yeah, right) I’m unnerved more than a little and it certainly gets one to thinking that Apple may not be as privacy-focused as they want us to believe.