Facebook vs Apple: A brief timeline of the feud

It's no secret that Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook don't see eye to eye. Both have taken pot shots at each other in public, criticizing company policies and business practices.

What you may not know is that the feud has been brewing for a while.

It all began in 2014

In an interview with PBS News' Charile Rose, Tim Cook answered a question on privacy by denouncing business models which view the customer as a product.

"If they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried," Cook said. "And you should really understand what's happening to that data."

The interesting thing about this is Cook's comments followed weeks after Apple's own snafu which saw multiple compromising photos of high profile female celebrities leaked online following an iCloud hack.

Later that year, Zuckerberg fired back at Apple during an interview with Time's Lev Grossman. When asked to comment on Tim Cook's remarks, Zuckerberg replied, "A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers, I think it’s the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you’re paying Apple that you’re somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they’d make their products a lot cheaper!”

The Cambridge Analytica scandal

In 2018, the unthinkable happened. People all over the world got a reality check when a whistle-blower revealed that the analytics firm had harvested data from over 50 million Facebook users without consent. Worse, the mined data was used for political advertising.

During an interview with MSNBC and Recode, Cook was asked to weigh in on the subject and asked what he would do in the situation.

Cook replied that Facebook should have regulated itself when it came to the data, he also reiterated that Facebook sees customers as product. Cook also bought up Apple's commitment to privacy saying, "The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product, we've elected not to do that."

Zuckerberg hit back on the Ezra Klein Show podcast, he denied that Facebook saw people as dollar signs, "You know, I find that argument, that if you're not paying that somehow we can't care about you, to be extremely glib. And not at all aligned with the truth."

In the same year, The New York Times detailed an interaction Zuckerberg had with his employees, asking them all to switch to Android.

Facebook also made no attempt to refute or deny that report saying, "Tim Cook has consistently criticized our business model and Mark has been equally clear he disagrees. So there's been no need to employ anyone else to do this for us and we've long encouraged our employees and executives to use Android because it is the most popular operating system in the world."

It was also revealed recently by the Wall Street Journal that Mark Zuckerberg told his team that they needed to "inflict pain" on Apple following Cook's comments.

Apple's 30% fee on the app store

In 2020, a report from Buzzfeed news claimed that Zuckerberg had openly criticized Apple in a company-wide meeting. He said that Apple has a, "unique stranglehold as a gatekeeper on what gets on phones."

He also argued that the App store fee was "monopoly rent" and it blocks innovation and competition while allowing Apple's apps to take the spotlight.

During the same year, Apple also blocked an update for Facebook on iOS. The update introduced a new way for people to buy tickets to events from inside the app and would have included a notice that informed user's that 30% of the price that they pay for the ticket would go to Apple.

Apple rejected the update on grounds that it contained irrelevant information for users forcing Facebook to change the update.

In a statement to Business Insider, Facebook said, "Now more than ever, we should have the option to help people understand where money they intend for small businesses actually goes. Unfortunately Apple rejected our transparency notice around their 30% tax but we are still working to make that information available inside the app experience."

Apple had also locked horns with Epic Games and Spotify that year. The music streaming service alleged that the fee allowed Apple to inflate prices in comparison to its own competing apps.

iOS Privacy Update

The two companies were at each other's throats again following the announcement of a new privacy feature in iOS 14 that would require developer's to ask user's permission before they tracked their activities for data.

Facebook put out ads in newspapers telling the world that the move was going to hurt small scale business who were going to find it hard to acquire new customers.

Apple hit back at the social media giant and said it was standing up for its users.