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By Jason Snell for Macworld
Apple can be great or it can be Google–but it can’t be both
For a long time, Apple has placed itself in opposition to Google. Google is fundamentally an advertising company whose customers are ad buyers, while Apple’s customers are people who buy Apple devices and services. Despite seeming so similar in so many ways, they’re really quite different.
But lately, it seems that Apple is interested in being a bit more like Google. As Bloomberg reported in August, Apple VP of Advertising Todd Teresi has a dream of taking the company’s current $4 billion in annual ad revenue and more than doubling it, into the double digits of billions.
I’m not one of those people who think that advertising is fundamentally evil. (I have, after all, spent my career working for media properties–including this one–that are funded by advertising.) But I do wonder if Apple’s quest to chase ad revenue reflects a culture that has lost the plot about what makes Apple great.