We believe the customer should be in control of their own information. You might like these so-called free services, but we don t think they re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose. And we think someday, customers will see this for what it is.
— Tim Cook, Apple CEO, once again takes aim at his company s competitors. He didn t mention Google directly, but it s easy to read between the lines; Google rolled out its new Photos offering a few days ago.
Cook s comments came during a speech Monday at a Washington event where TechCrunch said he became the first business person honored for corporate leadership by EPIC, a privacy and public advocacy group.
Last fall, Cook rolled out a campaign with a new privacy site and an appearance on Charlie Rose s show, where he criticized Google s ad-based business model and touted Apple products as the better choice for those concerned about privacy. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt begged to differ, of course. As I wrote then, privacy advocates cheered the emerging battle between tech s biggest companies over who cares more about their users privacy in this post-Edward Snowden world.
In his speech this week, Cook didn t seem to single out just Google. He was probably also talking about another company that relies on ads: Facebook. I m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. (By the way, Apple has its own iAd business, which the Wall Street Journal says serves up ads on apps using customers iTunes purchase history and addresses.)
TechCrunch noted that Cook also addressed encryption and slammed those in the government who are pushing for backdoors access: Let me be crystal clear — weakening encryption, or taking it away, harms good people that are using it for the right reasons. And ultimately, I believe it has a chilling effect on our First Amendment rights and undermines our country s founding principles.
But back to Cook s comments about family photos being data mined and sold off. Here s what a Google spokeswoman told me in an email: Your Google Photos account is just as private and secure as any other Google service. We don t share your information with others unless you explicitly choose to share it with them. Also: We have no monetization plans at this time. Google Photos will not use images or videos uploaded onto Google Photos commercially for any promotional purposes, unless we ask for the user s explicit permission.
Photo of Tim Cook by Associated Press
