Facebook meets Apple in Clash of the Tech Titans – ‘We need to inflict pain’

Facebook Inc.’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has for years grouped that Apple Inc. and the leader, Tim Cook, have too much swing over the social media giant’s business. In 2018, his anger boiled over.

Facebook was involved in controversy over its data collection practices. Mr. Cook stumbled further in a national TV interview and said that his own company would never have found itself in such a jam. Mr. Zuckerberg shot back that Cook’s comments were “extremely slippery” and “not at all in line with the truth.”

Privately, Mr. Zuckerberg was even tougher. “We have to inflict pain,” he told his team for treating the company so badly, according to people familiar with the exchange.

It was not the first time ̵

1; or the last – that Mr. Cook’s comments and actions would leave Mr. Zuckerberg sewing and at times planning to return to Apple. The escalation of complaints erupted late last month in a rare public tit-for-tat between the two technology giants that revealed the smoldering enmity between the leaders, who exchanged jabs about privacy, app tracking tools and finally their duel visions of the future of the internet.

Apple has positioned itself as a protector of digital privacy, and maintains a greater good, while often criticizing Facebook’s business model – without naming the company. All this shakes Facebook, which sees Apple as overreach in a way that threatens Facebook’s existence, and hypocritical, including by doing extensive business is China where privacy is low. An attempt to meet tensions in 2017 through a face-to-face meeting between the two CEOs resulted in a tense distance.