Google core business is ads. It is not the same.

Apple's core business is trapping users into their walled garden so they can rent seek.

Whichever one you think is worse is really just a reflection of your own personal values. I value computing freedom above all.

> Apple's core business is trapping users into their walled garden so they can rent seek.

Apple’s core business is selling hardware. Their services revenue is not even close to their hardware revenue.

Yes, trapping users into their walled hardware garden so they can rent seek.

You buy a phone, and you're forever forced into buying only their peripherals.

That’s demonstrably untrue.

You could say that there are Apple devices that do not work well or don’t work at all without another Apple device, and off the top of my head I would say the only ones are the Watch and the HomePod, but most alternative devices work fine with Apple ones, e.g Chromecast, Garmin watches, Google Home hubs, etc.

And even so, the same could be said about Android only features and devices, e.g. Samsung Watch doesn’t work without an Android phone, Google Earbuds are feature capped on iPhone, etc.

IMO, if we are looking at rent seeking behaviors, Google shoving Gemini down the throats of Google Home users, with no chance of rolling back if they don’t like it, is way worse.

Demonstrably not true? What did you do with the 200+ Apple-only charging cables?

What are you even talking about? The only Apple exclusive connector in recent memory was Lightning, and it’s been phased out.

Did you get rid of all your micro USB cables and devices once the transition to USB-C began for Android?

> I value computing freedom above all.

So perhaps you should consider switching to GNU/Linux phones.

The difference between Apple vs Google is that with Apple you ARE the ad. They don't need advertising when they know people will adopt them and then be forced into their ecosystem.

I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. Even if that was true, my point was that an ad driven business like Google, would be incentivized to monetize all the aspects of my life they could have access to. If that’s not what Apple is doing, compared to Google, then that’s a win I guess?

> would be incentivized to monetize all the aspects of my life they could have access to

You're literally describing Apple's business model.

That’s false.

Google most profitable business line is ads. They profit from literally knowing everything about you, then selling access to that to ad bidders. Apple makes the most money from devices. It is not the same.

> They don't need advertising

Then why is it that they advertise? We just last week had a thread about how the Apple app store is making ads blend in more with organic results. So not only are they advertising to users (which admittedly was news to me), they are engaging in dark patterns to make those ads more enticing. It doesn't seem like being locked into the Apple ecosystem (and paying their tax on hardware) is actually benefiting the users.

One should read, carefully, the Apple EULA and TOS.

Is it worse than Google?

That's where GrapheneOS comes in. You can go fully Google-free or use their "sandboxed Google libraries" to run the Google apps as a normal user.