100%. Most business is just advanced sophistry at this point. Marketing and advertising serves a useful purpose for new products, when the market isn't aware that it exists.
But by quantity and cost, most advertising is just social manipulation and is effectively an extra drain on the economy.
Not exactly true. If you enable "Advanced Data Protection" not even apple can look at your data (with the exception of data which has to be interoperable like calendars and mail)
I'm sure the Google is also encrypting the data with the exception of the interoperable data. So there's no difference. Why point fingers when Apple do the same?
Apple also know your browsing history. They also know your app usage. They also store your contacts, calendar, photos - just like Google. I don't see the difference.