In the past two weeks, executives from both Apple and Google have taken the stage at the Moscone Center, in San Francisco, to pump up their troops, their developer corps, and the media. What struck me first in this technology lollapalooza was how similar the events were. Leading the onstage brigades were leaders from the companies’ second generations. Apple’s chief, Tim Cook, was anointed king by the Apple’s founder, the late Steve Jobs. Google’s Sundar Pichai has been crowned the crown prince by Google’s co-founder and C.E.O. Larry Page. Both keynotes were by turns interesting, fun, and cringeworthy. Apple Music was mostly an embarrassment for a company known for immaculate launches—it was unfocussed, rambling, and uncool. Google’s event had moments that were good for a quick nap. There is vaporware in there. And both events were very long and yet oddly short on technical details. These are developer conferences, after all, where details actually count.
Sure, Google’s and Apple’s ecosystems look a little different, but they are meant to do pretty much the same thing. For the two companies, innovation on mobile essentially means catching up to the other’s growing list of features. Sometimes, I wonder if Apple and Google are like Vitali and Wladimir Klitshcko, the Ukrainian brothers who have, for past decade, made the heavyweight boxing championship a very boring family affair. Even their products sound remarkably the same. Apple Pay. Android Pay. Apple Photos. Google Photos. Apple Wallet. Google Wallet. Google announced its “Internet of things” efforts, such as Weave and Brillo. Apple came back with HomeKit. Android in the car. Apple in the car. At the Google I/O conference, Google announced app-focussed search and an invisible interface that allows us to get vital information without opening an application. There was an improved Google Now (a.k.a. Now On Tap). Apple announced a new, improved Siri. It also announced Proactive Assistant. Google launched Photos, which can magically sort, categorize, and even search thousands of photos using voice commands. Apple improved its Photos app—you can search them using Siri.
These two companies are very much alike—the Glimmer Twins of our appy times. And, like any set of twins, if you look closely you start to see the differences.
Earlier this month, talking to an audience at an event organized by EPIC, a not-for-profit civil rights and privacy group, the Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook said:
Given the timing of the speech, just a couple of days after the launch of Google Photos, Cook was clearly criticizing his rivals in Mountain View. His statement shows an attitude that sharply contrasts with the one demonstrated by the Google vice-president Bradley Horowitz in response to a question about whether Google will mine personal photos for other things:
These two comments from two senior executives essentially encapsulate the ideologies of the two companies and how they approach their respective businesses.
For Google, Android—the operating system it built, which now powers a majority of the world’s mobile phones—is a means to an end. It’s a way to push Google’s various services deeper into our lives, collect as much data as possible, and then build intelligent and automatic experiences. Google Now—an algorithmic personal assistant—is an outcome of this approach. In order for the service to work, the company needs to send all the information it can gather to the cloud. Or, to put it more directly, the company must put all of your information inside Google’s gigantic server farms. Google then uses all of this data to make Google Now more personal and perceptive. If you’re texting a friend about dinner, Google will give you restaurant reviews and directions automatically. In the future, it might make a reservation and call a driverless car. The more repetitive you are in your behavior, the more the algorithms learn to automate things for you. Google’s approach has its benefits—the company’s products are free, and you can be fairly confident they won’t break. The cost is in your data, privacy, and lack of control. Someday, Google will want to make money from all these experiences, either through advertising or through transactions that are hyper-tailored to you.
Apple’s approach is entirely different. For them, future personalization will be done by using information already on a device. When you search your iPhone, the company’s new Proactive Agent will quickly find content inside the apps on the device and bring it to the forefront. Imagine that you’ve organized a trip on an app such as TripIt, booked flights on United Airlines, and made hotel reservations. The travel plans will be synchronized with your calendar, but you will also get alerts on when to leave for the airport (depending on traffic conditions) and what route to take. When you arrive, your phone will show you your boarding pass. Any flight delays should automatically show up as well. If you like to read certain magazines on the plane, maybe the phone will download them for you in advance. It learns your habits. Plug in your headphones and you’ll get music recommendations based on your location.
The goal is no different than Google’s, but for Apple all this personalization is anonymous, and sits on a customer’s iPhone or iPad or watch. “It stays on your device, under your control,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice-president of software engineering, said onstage. The information is not correlated to Apple I.D. or any other Apple service. Apple’s gamble is that it can do locally on a device what Google does with machine learning and its cloud. Apple is giving you recommendations based on the phone in your pocket; Google is giving you recommendations based on everything you’ve done that it has recorded.
Apple was rather short on details in explaining how it will achieve its goal of using, learning, and building better services without collecting data on a global scale. But a phone-only approach does make sense for Apple, at least for now—after all, Apple makes better hardware than anyone else. Apple continues to make ever-thinner devices, with a superlative build and a luxurious feel. What the company has achieved beneath the surface is worth even more praise. As I have written in the past, Apple spends billions of dollars inventing new technologies—such as the stacked batteries inside the new MacBook or the highly integrated computer on a chip that powers the Apple Watch. By designing its own chips, Apple was able to build a smoothly working fingerprint reader into its devices, making them more private. Given that the usability and power of any Apple device starts at the silicon level, it’s natural for Apple’s approach to the next generation of technologies to start at the silicon level, too.
Still, one can’t help but wonder whether Apple backed into their position on privacy. As a cynic, I don’t think that Apple truly has a genuinely profound concern for the issue. Very little in their past would suggest that this is something they care about to the core. They’re a company that has always understood hardware, not software, and they’re fumbling as software becomes something defined by data and cloud and constant connectivity. Google’s view is a post-Internet ideology, and Apple, confused and slightly threatened, is falling back on an argument about privacy.
The battle between Google and Apple has shifted from devices, operating systems, and apps to a new, amorphous idea called “contextual computing.” We have become data-spewing factories, and the only way to make sense of it all is through context. Google’s approach to context is using billions of data points in its cloud and matching them to our personal usage of the Google-powered Web; Apple’s approach is to string together personal streams of data on devices, without trying to own any of it. If Google is taking an Internet approach to personal context, then Apple’s way is like an intranet.
From the surface, Google’s approach seems superior. Understanding context is all about data, and the company is collecting a lot more of it. Apple has your phone; Google has access to almost everything. Google’s approach might lack humanness, but the company will make up for that with accuracy and convenience. Apple’s approach will appeal to those for whom privacy is important. For now, that argument will resonate in parts of the United States and in most of Europe, while the rest of the planet will opt for a cheaper, more convenient, and, in the end, smarter system from Google.
And one day, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an executive from Apple come onstage at the Moscone Center, take a page from its rival, and say that they’re doing the same things with your data that Google is. The two companies aren’t all that different after all.
