Apple takes aim at Google in very folky ways
Regarding cellular browsers, there are only two topics: Chrome and Safari with 90% market percentage of them. And so when Apple puts photos on backup browsers focused on iPhone users, it uploads those photos to Google and Google dislikes them.
That’s the context for the urban privacy stunt behind Apple’s original home. As reported via SFGate, “Apple has turned one of its most prominent billboards in San Francisco into a new ad campaign, and it appears to include a dig at the Bay Area tech rival. ”
When Apple says that Safari is “a browser that is truly private,” it is issuing a very clear threat about its rival, the only alternative cellular browser of any use.
The threat itself isn’t a scare—let’s be clear, if privacy is your priority it’s most likely you’re not defaulting to Google Chrome. In its normal form, monitoring cookies are proving to have cockroach-like survivability, while in its semi-private “incognito mode”, it remains a little hazy as to how secretive it actually is.
As ESET’s Jake Moore explains, “Google revealed earlier this year that it collects your data if you use Google Chrome, even if you use Incognito mode. Personal data is very valuable to companies and when the terms and conditions are so difficult to understand, it may be easier for users to allow companies to collect data as they wish.
SFGate says of the latest billboard, “It certainly doesn’t contain any direct references to Google, but it’s impossible not to interpret the ad as anything other than an attack thrown against the Mountain View tech giant and its popular Chrome browser.”
Chrome’s tracking cookies are here to stay until at least early 2025. Contemporary reports suggest that some methods of AI searching user search history may run afoul of the so-called privacy sandbox – which is Google’s goal of replacing tracking cookies with one. It’s much less tragic, though its goals remain the same.
On the spin side, Chrome is a great browser – fast, multi-featured, and frequently updated with new options. Now it is not unexpected that its number of subscribers has reached close to 3 billion. However, it has a fancy engine underpinning its front-end, and it has been the subject of high-profile, exploited vulnerabilities, well beyond anything we’ve seen with Apple’s Safari in recent times. 4 Chrome zero-days were shown on closing day, and extensions to the browser have come under attack for reported threats on this day.
In fact, Google is like a store. Safari is a browser while Chrome is the front-end of Google’s trillion-dollar advertising gadget. It cannot turn off tracking by default without backup which seeks to track across different technologies. Not only would this destroy its own yellow swan, but it could also cause an uproar in the wider industry. Simply glance from side to side to monitor cookie obsolescence.
Safari isn’t great but it’s designed with a different mindset. “Safari can also track user activity but offers better settings to protect users and their identities,” says Moore. It doesn’t have a whole lot of baggage to handle and can go head-to-head with smaller competition like Firefox and Breeze that push privacy as a USP.
This Chrome as opposed to Safari trade-off is, in fact, tougher than Google’s way through to secure the default search slot on iPhones. However, looking inside Safari is a much more immersive experience than using the same search technology in Chrome.
Unless there are very specific reasons to value Chrome, iPhone users will definitely have to default to Safari. It’s quite dark by default, and its privacy take is far better than Chrome’s – it even removes the tension between tabs, inside classes, unlike Chrome.
“If you have one incognito window open and you open another,” Google explains, “your private browsing session will continue in the new window.” To exit incognito mode, close all incognito windows. Separate it from Safari. “Browsing initiated in one tab is separate from browsing initiated in another tab,” Apple says, “so the websites you visit can’t track your browsing across multiple sessions.”
And that little quality cleverly sums up the excess. This is Apple’s philosophy more than anything else. Apple’s Californian billboard might seem modest, with a batch going on behind it.
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