I wonder what would happen if FB and Google went a step further and decided to give Apple the Windows Phone (or Huawei) treatment, by pulling all their apps from the App Store, citing these changes as the reason they can't support Apple's platform. I'm not sure the majority of iOS devices users would be happy with any of the involved parties, and that includes Apple.

> I'm not sure the majority of iOS devices users would be happy with any of the involved parties, and that includes Apple.

I think Apple is smart enough to know how to spin it if Facebook or Google left the App Store because of privacy issues. Some users would be annoyed at Apple, sure, but I would bet many users would see it as a Facebook/Google problem. I didn't hear people blame Apple for requiring listing what data is being collected when Google started not updating their apps and warnings started appearing.

I like this idea, but I imagine it could be seen as anti competitive for Google to do this... I know it would motive me to use an Android phone, but that might not help Google case of being a none monopoly player... Also I could see Apple firing back by removing Google as their primary search engine inversely impacting Google search ads revenue... So definitely I think Apple has the upper hand. Although I do not believe Apple is honest in their privacy stance... Native apps IMO are far far less private then a browser application...

Google is the default search engine on iOS because they pay Apple $7 billion annually for the privilege, I don't think they're going to be strongly motivated to pull the plug on that

They all work great in the browser. You don’t need their apps.

I'd be thrilled.

I wonder what would happen if all partied just came clean.

This isn't about privacy or user data, it's a disagreement over how revenue is shared.

So rather than this sort of wording from the article: centers on the iPhone data of millions of people and whether companies should be able to track

We be read something like this: Facebook and Google go to war with Apple over revenue sharing agreement.

Eh? Revenue is affected by this, no doubt (otherwise thefacebook.com wouldn't go to war), but of course this is also about privacy and user data. How can you deny that?

You should provide some data to support a bold claim like Facebook and Google is sharing their revenue with Apple.

There's one big pie, and these companies slice the majority of it up between them.

When one or another of them does things that changes who gets what sized slice, the others get upset.

What does it mean to say “there’s one big pie”?

There’s one big pie of US GDP. That doesn’t mean anytime someone gains or loses revenue that they are sharing it with someone else. Or at least there is no utility to be gained from that statement.

Relevant/obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1172/

On the subject, I would really prefer this to be an option as well, even with the default being not the current default, however I see that there is a general trend of removing a lot of fine tuning knobs in apps (android or otherwise) in the sake of reducing complexity for the end-user.

Last time I checked they don't support associating their borderless card to a Greek postal address.

As far as I remember, GMail was announced on April 1st, 2004 and was considered by most (all?) an April Fool's joke.