I have two feelings about this. The first is, that if my data usefully supplies information to "the commons" which makes services like maps better for everyone including me, there is a zero-sum win-win here, and I'm ok.
The second is, that if there is some private leveraged advantage Google gets, over other people, which dis-equilibriates in the commons, This is not good, and I should be told quite clearly thats the case, and how it works.
Fyi, google also uses it. Has been using it before Apple. Even opensourced it so that people could make sure its effectiveness. Also, right now its AI division is doing considerable research in federated learning ( its basically, diff. provacy).
But,apple promoted this as if it was their breakthrough.
Heard of Ian Goodfellow (the GANfather)? He is one of the geniuses at G researching in this area.
Google also uses Differential Privacy, in fact, Chrome was the first consumer app to ship with differential privacy (RAPPOR: https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub42852).
The second is, that if there is some private leveraged advantage Google gets, over other people, which dis-equilibriates in the commons, This is not good, and I should be told quite clearly thats the case, and how it works.