Value | The Cynical Musician:

Google’s greatest fear, however, is that the content that draws the biggest audiences might be placed beyond its reach. It has seen this happen with Facebook. That’s why Google lobbies against copyright enforcement and for and “open internet” – with the special Googley meaning that “open” has here. It doesn’t mean open, as in “open market”(where anyone can set up shop, for fun or profit), it means open as in “you cannot shut Google out”.

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Apple, on the other hand, as Andrew points out: “hasn’t spent one cent on lobbying against intellectual property”.

Apple doesn’t need other people’s property to make money. For Apple, consumers aren’t the means to an end. They are the end. Apple creates valuable consumer products and charges a pretty penny for them. Guess what? People are buying. Not just the “atoms” (devices) either; the iTunes Music and App stores are doing pretty well, too. Apple sees value in intellectual property and is prepared to pay for it in order to sell it to its customers, increasing the value of its devices in the process. Apple’s thoughts are for the consumer and how it can provide the greatest value, that it will then charge for. Unlike Google, it has no interest in decreasing the perception of value, because that would mean that it would need to charge less. To Google, the value of what it provides is simply in how many eyeballs it gets. It doesn’t need to be great, just good enough.