SAN FRANCISCO — At a confab for tech and media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2019, Timothy D. Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook sat down to repair their fraying relationship.
For years, the chief executives had met annually at the conference, which was held by the investment bank Allen & Company, to catch up. But this time, Facebook was grappling with a data privacy scandal. Mr. Zuckerberg had been blasted by lawmakers, regulators and executives — including Mr. Cook — for letting the information of more than 50 million Facebook users be harvested by a voter-profiling firm, Cambridge Analytica, without their consent.
At the meeting, Mr. Zuckerberg asked Mr. Cook how he would handle the fallout from the controversy, people with knowledge of the conversation said. Mr. Cook responded acidly that Facebook should delete any information that it had collected about people outside of its core apps.
Mr. Zuckerberg was stunned, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Facebook depends on data about its users to target them with online ads and to make money. By urging Facebook to stop gathering that information, Mr. Cook was in effect telling Mr. Zuckerberg that his business was untenable. He ignored Mr. Cook’s advice.
Two years later, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Cook’s opposing positions have exploded into an all-out war. On Monday, Apple plans to release a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook track them across other apps.
One of the secrets of digital advertising is that companies like Facebook follow people’s online habits as they click on other programs, like Spotify and Amazon, on smartphones. That data helps advertisers pinpoint users’ interests and better target finely tuned ads. Now, many people are expected to say no to that tracking, delivering a blow to online advertising — and Facebook’s $70 billion business.
At the center of the fight are the two C.E.O.s. Their differences have long been evident. Mr. Cook, 60, is a polished executive who rose through Apple’s ranks by constructing efficient supply chains. Mr. Zuckerberg, 36, is a Harvard dropout who built a social-media empire with an anything-goes stance toward free speech.
Those contrasts have widened with their deeply divergent visions for the digital future. Mr. Cook wants people to pay a premium — often to Apple — for a safer, more private version of the internet. It is a strategy that keeps Apple firmly in control. But Mr. Zuckerberg champions an “open” internet where services like Facebook are effectively free. In that scenario, advertisers foot the bill.
The relationship between the chief executives has become increasingly chilly, people familiar with the men said. While Mr. Zuckerberg once took walks and dined with Steve Jobs, Apple’s late co-founder, he does not do so with Mr. Cook. Mr. Cook regularly met with Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, but he and Mr. Zuckerberg see each other infrequently at events like the Allen & Company conference, these people said.
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The executives have also jabbed at each other. In 2017, a Washington political firm funded by Facebook and other Apple rivals published anonymous articles criticizing Mr. Cook and created a false campaign to draft him as a presidential candidate, presumably to upend his relationship with former President Donald J. Trump. And when Mr. Cook was asked by MSNBC in 2018 how he would deal with Facebook’s privacy issues if he was in Mr. Zuckerberg’s shoes, he replied, “I wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Apple and Facebook declined to make Mr. Cook and Mr. Zuckerberg available for interviews and said the men have no personal animosity toward each other.
Regarding the new privacy feature, Apple said, “We simply believe users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it’s used.”
Facebook said Apple’s feature was not about privacy and was instead about profit.
“Free, ad-supported services have been essential to the growth and vitality of the internet, but Apple is trying to rewrite the rules in a way that benefits them and holds back everyone else,” a spokeswoman said.
A Chasm Opens
Mr. Cook and Mr. Zuckerberg first intersected more than a decade ago, when Mr. Cook was second in command at Apple and Facebook was a start-up.
At the time, Apple saw Facebook as a hedge against Google, the search giant that had expanded into mobile phone software with Android, a former Apple executive said. Around 2010, Eddy Cue, who leads Apple’s digital services, sought out Mr. Zuckerberg for a potential software partnership, the former executive said.
In the ensuing meetings, Mr. Zuckerberg told Mr. Cue that Apple had to deliver a great deal for a partnership, or the social network would be happy to go it alone, this person said. Some Apple executives felt those interactions showed that Mr. Zuckerberg was arrogant, this person added.
Two other people said that the talks were cordial and that they were confused by the characterization of the meetings. The discussions eventually led to a software feature that let iPhone owners share their photos directly to Facebook.
But the friction had set the tone. The situation was complicated as Facebook and Apple also became mutually dependent. The iPhone was a key device for people to use Facebook’s mobile app. And Facebook’s apps — which later also included Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp — have been some of the most downloaded programs from Apple’s App Store.
By 2014, Facebook executives had grown fearful of the leverage that Apple had over the distribution of its apps with iPhone customers. Those concerns were compounded when Apple at times delayed updates of Facebook's apps through its App Store, said people familiar with the matter.
In February 2014, when Facebook’s board met to discuss Project Cobalt, which was a potential acquisition of an unidentified large social app, Apple’s power was top of mind. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, argued for the deal partly to protect the social network from Apple’s and Google’s control over smartphone software, according to the meeting’s minutes, which were released last year as part of a congressional investigation into tech companies.
