But Apple does not pursue profits either!

In my essay on Google’s absence of profit (or income or business) motives questions were raised on the stated absence of hunger for profits from Apple and what difference there might be from Google’s philosophy.

Indeed, Jony Ive stated:

“Our goal isn’t to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. It may sound a little flippant, but it’s the truth.”1.

He was probably repeating what Jobs had previously stated:

“I remember very clearly Steve announcing that our goal is not just to make money but to make great products”2

However, note that both quotes are qualified. In the case of Jobs, he said “not just to make money”. Jobs clearly stated that great products lead to money. That great products are causal to money and therefore that if you make great products you make money. One leads to the other.

Ive also continued in this reasoning:

“Our goal, and what gets us excited, is to try to make great products. We trust that if we are successful people will like them. And if we are operationally competent we will make revenue. But we are very clear about our goal.”

I would paraphrase the Apple logic as “Great products are the means by which we sustain our business. By focusing on the product, the customer is satisfied and through that satisfaction we create the free cash flows which can be used to fund more products.”

There is a difference between Apple’s “indifference to money” and the “indifference to business models” that Google exhibits.

Google steps even further away from cash flows. Its goals are to build great things guided by their vision and patterns in the data they collect. The value is in the data itself rather than in any transaction.

As long as the source of money is unfettered, its provenance is uninteresting. A business model is a profit algorithm. It could be linked to the data but it need not be. Markets are messy and imperfect. Data provides much clearer views into value. You could conclude that value itself cannot be trusted to the judgement of the public. Value is to be determined through the recognition of patterns on data privately collected.

So when I say that Google has disdain for market mechanisms I mean that they believe they can do better. Apple still values the user as the ultimate adjudicator of its actions. Google looks past the user and interprets their intentions.

Google sees markets as ultimately obsolete.

1. at the British Embassy’s Creative Summing in July 2012 [↩]
2. Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs [↩]