Apple's Big iOS14 Update Could Wound These 2 Tech Giants

[Rupert]

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/30/apple-big-ios14-update-wound-these-2-tech-giants/

Back in June, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced it would require users to opt-in for ad tracking features for every app in iOS 14. The announcement immediately sparked complaints from advertisers that want to track ad performance and from publishers who claim the change would significantly reduce their ad revenue.

In response, Apple postponed the introduction of the feature when it launched iOS 14 in September. However, it still plans to add the feature sometime next year -- and online advertising giants like Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google should be concerned.

[Rupert]

If the wealthy iPhone users are taken out of the mix, it will be significant.

[ergophobe]

This is why it was so important for Google to win the browser war. If Microsoft had thought to add ad blocking and such back when it controlled 95% of the browser market in 2004, we might be looking at a very different landscape.

And I'm going to keep being annoying and insist that we stop calling them tech giants and refer to them as advertising giants or giant ad platforms or attention brokers. If they were selling technology, this wouldn't actually hurt them. It hurts them because they are selling attention.

I used to be anti-Apple, seeing it as a closed, proprietary system that used that lockout/lockin to justify exorbitant prices. I still see it that way, but now that they are using that extreme control to do this, I've become more of a fan. I even have an iPhone (okay, so it's an iPhone 6s that I got for free, but it's still very cool... trust me).

[Brad]

I used to be anti-Apple, seeing it as a closed, proprietary system that used that lockout/lockin to justify exorbitant prices. I still see it that way, but now that they are using that extreme control to do this, I've become more of a fan. I even have an iPhone (okay, so it's an iPhone 6s that I got for free, but it's still very cool... trust me).

Same.  I used to hate Apple's walled garden until they started getting on the "privacy" (or at least anti-ad tracking) bandwagon now I'm back using iOS.

The real shame in all this is we only have 2 mobile operating systems left, Android and iOS, for most of the planet.  Just like real search engines, this consolidation is so wrong.