For years, signs of discord have brewed between Facebook and Apple (Facebook Vs Apple). Their Chiefs Executives, Tim Cook of Apple and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have periodically taken thinly veiled shots at each other.
“If they are making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried, “Cook said of companies like Facebook in 2014.
In turn, Zuckerberg has retorted: “You think because you are paying Apple that you are somehow in alignment with them? If you are in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper.”
Facebook Vs Apple Wars
However, Apple is making changes that threaten Facebook’s business- and the fight has intensified. Early next year, Apple plans to start requiring iPhone owners to especially, choose whether to allow companies to rack them across different apps, a practice that Facebook relies on to target ads and charge advertisers more.
On Wednesday (16/12/2020), Facebook went on the offensive to forestall Apple’s changes. The social network created a website that slammed Apple’s move as a potential hurtful to small businesses. (It did not mention that the changes could hurt itself.) To reinforce its displeasure, the social network also took out full-page ads in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, to declare that it was “Standing up to Apple.”
And then to doubly emphasize its point, Facebook said it would provide information for the anti-trust suit against Apple filed by the Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite so that the court would understand “the unfair policies that Apple imposes.”
In a blog post, Dan Levy, a vice president of advertising at Facebook, said the company was taking the steps now because, “we have had from many of you, small businesses in particular, that you are concerned about how apple’s changes will impact your ability to effectively reach customers and grow-let alone survive in a pandemic.” He added, “so we are speaking up for small businesses.”
The escalating tensions are part of an unusual, high-stakes Facebook-Apple battle between two of the world’s most valuable companies, “which rely on each other and exert tremendous influence over digital behavior.
At the heart of the fight is how Facebook vs Apple are diametrically opposed on how they make money- and which company wins out is likely to help shape the internet for years to come. Apple prefers that consumers pay for their internet experience, leaving less need for advertisers, while Facebook favors making the internet free for the public with the bill footed by the companies they pay to show people ads.
The fracas is also a reminder of both companies’ power over the internet, as well as their leverage over each other. Facebook needs its app to work on Apple’s devices to reach hundreds of millions of people and Apple needs Facebook’s App- Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger-to make its devices worthy of their high price tags.
We are waiting with bated breath to see how the Facebook Vs Apple wars evolve in the coming days and who will blink first.
The original article above first appeared in the “Saturday Nation”, a publication of “Nation Media House”.
