Biden's WSJ op-ed targets big tech, and Apple should be both nervous and pleased

While the president didn't mention any tech company by name, his call to action clearly applies to the world's largest company.

- JASON CROSS

President Joe Biden just penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in an effort to get Republicans and Democrats on board with reining in the excesses and abuses of the biggest tech companies. He didn't name any individual company by name, but it is clear he was talking about most of the big companies whose products we use daily. As the most valuable (and some would argue most important and influential) tech company on earth, Apple comes high on the list in terms of the need for regulatory scrutiny.

Biden lays out three major areas in which he will push for legislation. One will likely make Apple quite happy, another should make Apple sweat, and the third doesn't really concern Apple much at all.

The first is a call for better privacy protections. Apple has been beating this drum for some time, marketing itself as the company whose products and services respect your privacy and who doesn't collect, sell, trade, and give away massive heaps of your data. That is marketing to some degree, but it's clear that Apple's economic engine is the sale of products and services, not of its users' data, and the company collects far less data (and encrypts more of it) than most companies that provide similar services.