It’s been about 3.5 years since Apple released Advanced Data Protection, and in that time Google has not put out a competing service.
What do you think?
Only if it affects their bottom line.
They don’t really have any reason to right now. The only time I think they would be forced to do so is if their data is breached.
When iCloud Advanced Data Protection (ADP) first rolled out, I hoped that the relevant product teams in Google would feel competitive pressure.
I don’t like feeling tied to Apple because of ADP for Apple Photos.
Any internal push for this at Google (I imagine there was something), must have been defeated by a stronger response from Google’s profit centres that function through surveillance capitalism. If market data failed to show that Google users were switching to iCloud because of ADP, giving Android users ADP would have been undercutting themselves for no benefit.
Given ADP is not a competitive strength, I’d love to know exactly how the team behind ADP pushed this through at Apple. I just have my suspicion the strongest argument was to limit the downside of an eventual breach of iCloud. Even so, that’s forward-thinking security investment beyond most other companies I’m familiar with.
This is a bold assumption to make, why would it not be?
ADP to me is a very obvious competitive strength. It is just that the upside for Google to suck up all your data and train their AI models on your Google Photos collection outweighs that competitive strength. Without a similar opposing force at Apple, I would think that ADP wins out on its merits alone, not as a mere risk-mitigation strategy.
If their actual concern was simply reducing liability/risk for hosting data on iCloud, they would make ADP mandatory and no longer host any cleartext data. It being an optional feature makes it more clear to me that Apple knows some people will switch to iCloud simply because that feature exists.
Hardly bold. ADP to me is a competitive advantage, but not a strength. ADP is not a major driver of customers to Apple. And as you say, the upside for Google to hoover data and train their AI models on our Google Photos is stronger.
And yet Apple’s product teams are sensitive to customer perceptions of friction in the user experience. Mandatory ADP introduces friction to customers who don’t want responsibility.
I would myself not rule out Apple wanting to have its cake and it eat too. By offering ADP, Apple signals its privacy marketing is not talk. By making ADP optional, Apple leaves open the option to do something with the data of the vast majority of iCloud customers who have not opted in.