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Gruber on Google's cookies:

"I’d have used “tracking” in place of “engaging with”, but that’s semantics."

"Sounds wrong, or is wrong?"

Gruber on Apple's storage of GPS data:

"[It's] either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight."

I don't mean to rip on the guy directly. Gruber's a competent writer, and in the technology world, that's rare. But I don't understand why his opinion on Google's cookie debacle are "news" when his agenda is so obvious; what Apple does is good, what Google does is bad.




I think in this situation, it's a question of intent. I don't think anyone has suggested that Apple was trying to do anything other than make it easy for you to acquire GPS lock by saving your location information, and the long backup history was an oversight. In the case of Google bypassing your browser security - it was clearly not a case of oversight - they went to a lot of effort to deliberately override the browser intent.

One was an error of incompetence, the other was willful.


I tend to agree with him, and I really don't call that a double standard. Apple is not really in the business of collecting data about people for showing them targeted ads, but Google is (it's their primary source of revenue). So, when something iPhone's cell tower location tracking happened, I think the probability of Apple telling the truth (it was a mistake) is much greater than the opposite.

Google, Facebook and many other companies are different though. Collecting data is their primary source of revenue (unlike Apple & Microsoft that sell hardware and software).




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