Apple has been very clear recently about how they deal with personal data, and how the company is not going to play along with the likes of Facebook and others who consider users to be products. With the new anti-tracking features rolling out in Safari, and Apple’s moves to prevent the sharing of personal data through apps, the company is enhancing its reputation as one that will protect its users.
Many people use iCloud for email, but Apple could enhance iCloud so many more could use the service: they could allow users to host their own domains on iCloud. The company did this in the past, with its MobileMe service, a precursor to iCloud. But if they were to allow this now, lots of users would be able to move their email hosting from Google, Microsoft, and others to iCloud, with the knowledge that their emails wouldn’t be read in order to serve ads to users.
I’d love this; my personal email domain is currently hosted on Google because of the company’s performance and excellent spam filtering, but, even if Google may not scan all personal email that’s not going through its free Gmail service, I feel uncomfortable having my email hosted there. I am currently looking for a replacement.
If Apple had this feature, I’d gladly entrust them with my email, especially since I’m already paying them for additional iCloud storage, and it would centralize two services with one provider.
Will Apple do this again? They’d get people to pay more for storage, and perhaps they could charge a fee to host domains as well. But they probably wouldn’t want to do this. It’s a lot of hassle, and there’s probably a lot of support involved. But it would be good for Apple’s reputation.