Apple's latest ad wants you to buy a $500+ tablet computer that runs App Store apps. Apple wants to sell you shiny things to make money.
Google's latest ad wants you to store personal details about your child's life, from birth, on their servers. Google wants your data so they can sell it (aggregated and anonymized, of course) to others to make money.
Taken in that context, Apple's ad might be obnoxious and highly commercial, but Google's is downright creepy.
That's not an Apple fanboy perspective, that's a privacy fanboy perspective. And it's not iPhone vs. Android either. iPhone users use tons of Google services, including Gmail, Maps, and Search, and YouTube built in, and Voice, Latitude, etc. available via apps. Given over a 100 million iOS devices, we're a huge part of Google's user base, and a valuable part. And for the record, I haven't liked some of Apple's recent ads either.
But I do think about how each company makes money and what they have to sell to make that money. Apple makes almost all their money selling hardware products -- selling to you. Google makes almost all their money selling advertising -- selling you. (Or in this case, your child. Seriously.)
I'm not telling anyone to stop using Google, far from it. I'm a huge Google user myself. What I'm saying is this is not really a good ad.
(Note: As Apple ramps up iAds, this'll be a concern for iOS users as well.)
Both videos after the break.
UPDATE: Again, I'm a huge user of Google services -- this is not intended to scare anyone but simply to inform users, so users can make better informed decisions. Convenience and security are always at odds, and choosing the convenience of free cloud services like Google's sacrifices the security of your personal information. I currently find that an acceptable compromise. If you don't have a problem with it either, than good for you. Enjoy. As long as we all know the deal.
