That’s a weird position to take. Their stance is fake because their MOTIVE for protecting privacy isn’t one of pure altruism? Why should I care what their motive is?
The fact that they don’t need to monetize my privacy, combined with the fact that they CAN monetize NOT monetizing my privacy, is reason enough for me to trust that they will do what they can not to invade my privacy.
“If [some other universe existed, then] their ‘privacy’ stance would be completely different.” I mean, seriously. What kind of point is that? If we lived in the evil parallel Spock-goatee universe than Apple would be evil and google would be a bunch of freedom fighters trying to save us from invasions of privacy. So I’ll go with google?
Right now Apple has no need to invade our privacy, their products are designed to avoid invading our privacy, and they promise not to invade our privacy. That puts them ahead of most alternatives in regards to privacy, even if they aren’t perfect, and regardless of their motives.