No, it's very much different than Google. Google doesn't have your cash at heart. They've largely been uninterested in your cash. The cash they do care about is that of the advertisers that use their platform. Apple is unapologetically interested in your money and less interested in impinging on people's privacy.
We can argue over which model is preferable to users, with may preferring to pay and others preferring the sponsored option, but you can't really say that Apple and Google are equivalent.
People like to frame the Apple vs Google battle as one of openness vs closed-ness, of an ecosystem with many participants vs a walled garden with just Apple. But I see it far more as a battle over how we choose to pay for technology...directly or indirectly.
I like to think Google gives you a choice of how you're being advertised to, product depending. Lots of times they give you the option to limit the data you send to marketing firms, or outright limit the data they collect (i.e. location history, search history, etc)
We can argue over which model is preferable to users, with may preferring to pay and others preferring the sponsored option, but you can't really say that Apple and Google are equivalent.
People like to frame the Apple vs Google battle as one of openness vs closed-ness, of an ecosystem with many participants vs a walled garden with just Apple. But I see it far more as a battle over how we choose to pay for technology...directly or indirectly.