To what extent is this really "tracking"? Apple's ads are served only in a few of their own apps, like the App Store and News. They're only tracking you across their own services, no differently than Facebook or Google could do in iOS 14, right?
This seems like a poor equivalence when Facebook and Google aren’t allowed to run an App Store on iOS, and Apple also boosts News, Music and other services by bundling and exempting them from the 30% revenue cut that competitors are subject to. Overall, the big picture is Apple is leveraging their power of platform owner to advantage their other businesses at the expense of competition and ultimately the consumer.
The big money at stake in this particular change is ads promoting the installation of apps. Facebook’s current tracking allows them to show that a particular ad FB displayed resulted in spending on an app. Apple taking over this business with their own ad service is just another aspect of their efforts to capture an ever-expanding chunk of commerce that occurs on every iOS device. Keep in mind the context that Apple is banning apps for allowing users to use subscription services without paying Apple 30% of the subscription revenue.
For what it’s worth, Google is guilty of some of the same issues on Android. I hope any regulation cracking down on these abuses will be equally applied.
I'm not sure it's a poor equivalence. Apple's ads appear only in a few of their own apps. I wouldn't even call it an ad service, because that implies that third-parties can use it.
In comparison, Google and Facebook both operate actual, for-profit ad services that are used across almost every website and app in the world.
I agree about Apple being too strict on the App Store. But it's not really what I'm talking about.
The biggest market for Facebook’s ads on iOS is for apps. Apple is cracking down on that with this change, so Facebook won’t be able to show attribution for app purchases. It’s hard not to think that this change is an effort to take over the market with their competing app advertising service.
My claim is that this is part of the larger effort to take a bigger cut the economic activity that happens on the phone. The 30% app cut expansion to cover more services is part of that. Capturing the advertising revenue for apps is another. The only way for Apple to keep growing as a two trillion dollar company is to take over more of the economy, and this is part of that effort.
I envision a future where, if they can get away with it, Apple takes an expanding cut of every Doordash delivery, every Uber ride, every Amazon purchase, and any other good or service that they can obtain sufficient market power to capture.
In such doomsday scenario and assuming no laws gets passed to change things the service providers (eg. Instagram, Uber, Doordash) can start charging iOS users more to adjust for this. This is already happening as the YT subscription shows.
That is, goods on Amazon, Uber rides, food prices all will be more expensive to iOS users and then maybe Instagram and TikTok can start charging iOS users $50/yr as well. At the end of the day a mobile platform needs third party services as much they need the platform otherwise Windows phone would've survived.
