Mark Zuckerberg Dismisses Tim Cook's View on Ad-Supported Companies as 'Ridiculous'

Mark Zuckerberg has spoken out about Apple CEO Tim Cook recent comments on ad-supported businesses, calling them 'ridiculous'.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Cook offered his thoughts on privacy suggesting that users are ad-supported companies' product and that customers should be worried about that.

"We've taken a very different view of this than a lot of other companies have. Our view is when we design a new service we try not to collect data. So, we're not reading your email. We're not reading your iMessage. If the government laid a subpoena on us to get your iMessages, we can't provide it. It's encrypted and we don't have a key. It's sort of the door is closed. Our business Charlie is based on selling these. Our business is not based on having information about you. You're not our product. Our products are these, and this watch, and Macs and so forth. So, we run a very different company. I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money. Follow the money and if they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data I think you have a right to be worried and you should really understand what's happening to that data."


In an interview with TIME, Zuckerberg spoke out against that line of thought.

Zuckerberg also notes—and it was the only time I saw him display irritation—that Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote something similar in September in a statement spelling out Apple’s privacy policy: “When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.” The shot was probably meant for Google, but Facebook was definitely in the blast radius.

“A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers,” Zuckerberg says. “I think it’s the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you’re paying Apple that you’re somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper!”

You can find the full interview at the link below. The story originally appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of TIME.


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