Why Apple’s Privacy Track Record Hurts Google’s Case

The company’s data privacy claims clash with their Big Tech alliance

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. Federal District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in an antitrust opinion of seismic proportions against search monopolist Google. The opinion’s impact is tantamount to the Microsoft antitrust case in the 1990s regarding its monopoly over the browser market or the breakup of AT&T in the 80s.

Google didn’t build a mobile search monopoly on its own, however, as Apple has played a key role in its growth. Google only controls about 40% of the mobile search market. The other 60% is controlled by Apple. So Google and Apple struck up a deal to secure Google’s monopoly: make Google Search the default on Apple’s Safari in exchange for $20 billion a year

Should Apple and Google be able to keep this collusive contract? That’s one question before Judge Mehta, as he has yet to rule on the appropriate remedy to Google’s antitrust violation. In its proposed remedies framework, The Department of Justice, under both the Trump and Biden administrations, has argued that they shouldn’t be allowed to, asking the court to proscribe Google’s “use of contracts, monopoly profits, and other tools to control or influence longstanding and emerging distribution channels and search-related products.” This potential government-supported remedy includes foreclosing on Google’s deal with Apple. 

In response, Apple filed a motion to intervene, asking the court to leave its deal with Google intact. Apple argued that even if Google didn’t pay it $20 billion a year, they would not develop its own search engine to compete with Google’s. The company claims that it can’t monetize such a venture because that would require Apple to leverage “user data” to obtain revenue from online advertising. And doing that would run afoul “against Apple’s longstanding privacy commitments to itself and its users.”

A few facts undercut that premise.  

To start, Apple isn’t afraid of online advertising—it even created an ad platform, iAd, when it acquired Quattro Wireless in 2010. iAd was so influential that the Federal Trade Commission used it as a justification to greenlight Google’s hotly contested merger with AdMob in 2010. According to the FTC, Apple was “poised to become a strong competitor in the mobile advertising market” because of their “close relationships with application developers and users, its access to a large amount of proprietary user data, and its ownership of iPhone software development tools and control over the iPhone developers’ license agreement.”

To be fair, Apple only ran the ad platform until 2016. But does that mean Apple is admitting now to violating its users’ privacy for 6 years during iAd’s operation? Or did Apple discover in 2016 that user privacy was “a fundamental human right,” as it sometimes argues?

This is hardly the case. 

Rather, Apple is still leveraging user data to profit through advertising. Just consider a class action lawsuit that Apple recently agreed to settle over Siri. The plaintiffs found that, since October 2011, Apple had “routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers.” Worse, these weren’t just trivial conversations, but they included recorded private discussions between patients and their doctors.

Yes, the same company that now claims your privacy constitutes “a fundamental human right” has been sharing with advertisers what patients have told their doctors for over 13 years.

And of course, Apple’s ongoing contract with Google is itself evidence that Apple doesn’t care about user privacy. After all, what is that $20 billion payment for other than to let Google leverage the data of Apple users for its search platform?

Apple even doubles down on the importance of harvesting that data in its brief, arguing that a “broad prohibition on commercial agreements between Apple and Google threatens to stifle the development of AI.” In other words, Apple is totally fine with Google violating its users’ privacy rights and leveraging user data for advertising and AI, so long as Apple gets its cut.

Apple talking out of both sides of its mouth is nothing new. Under the guise of free services, it steals the best independent apps on its platform in order to quash their competitors. Under the rubric of free trade, it lobbies against legislation to end the forced labor of Uyghurs in China. Under the pretense of protecting privacy, it opposes any law to make the online environment more safe for kids.

In truth, Apple treats user privacy less as a fundamental human right and more as a license to collude with Google and other Big Tech firms to monetize and monopolize every facet of its users’ data, lives, and privacy.

Privacy laws have been of little help to consumers. The total cost of Apple giving advertisers an inside perspective on doctor-patient relations? A meager $95 million, which accounts for about 9 hours of Apple’s annual profit. And consumers won’t see about a third of that, as it’s reserved for the lawyers.

That’s why the Google antitrust case is so important. For the first time, real money is at stake, and consumers finally have the chance to strike back against Big Tech and win. That’s why Apple is cloaking its pleas for a $20 billion windfall in false principle. And that’s why Judge Mehta has a real opportunity to force Big Tech to compete and actually think about what’s best for the consumer.