*By Hope King and Carlo Versano* *As Cheddar reflects on 2018, we are profiling the most innovative, flamboyant, and often-controversial entrepreneurs and corporate leaders who delivered the year's most memorable moments in business. Of the CEO Class of 2018, who was crowned Biggest Flirt? Class Clown? Look [here](https://www.cheddar.com/tags/cheddar-awards) for all the Cheddar Awards and more year-end coverage.* Tim Cook really came out of his shell in 2018. Following the 2011 death of his predecessor, Apple ($APPL) founder Steve Jobs, Cook spent the first few years in the chief executive role flying under the radar, in sharp contrast to Jobs and his flamboyant style. As Apple's former chief operating officer, Cook focused on growing the company after Jobs' death, launching new products and services, including the Apple Watch and Apple Pay. At the same time, he began shedding some of his cautious persona. He came out publicly as gay in 2014. A year-and-a-half later, he publicly accused the federal government of asking Apple to engineer the “software equivalent of cancer” to unlock the iPhone of a suspected terrorist. He clearly had become more comfortable in his role as SiIicon Valley's elder statesman. And this year, he saw a new opening. With the industry in turmoil as the big tech companies got rocked by a news cycle of unending privacy scandals, Cook reaffirmed his company's commitment to user privacy above all other goals. As with everything Apple does, it has been perhaps a shrewdly timed calculation, meant to elevate Apple in the minds of consumers just as the names of its biggest rivals and frenemies ー Google and Facebook ($FB), namely ー were being dragged through the mud. Good Morning America. Bloomberg. Vice. Axios. Fortune’s CEO Summit. CNN twice. Those were just a few of the platforms that Cook used this year to deliver a message intended to highlight Apple’s commitment to user privacy, while taking some not-so-subtle shots at the competition. When it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had accessed the private information of tens of millions of people on Facebook, Cook said in a public Q&A that it [wouldn't have happened on his watch](https://www.recode.net/2018/3/28/17172212/apple-facebook-revolution-tim-cook-interview-privacy-data-mark-zuckerberg). Those comments reportedly infuriated Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was in the midst of the biggest threat to his leadership since he founded Facebook in his dorm. He responded a few days later in an interview with Vox, calling Cook’s statement [“extremely glib”](https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17185052/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interview-fake-news-bots-cambridge). He then added: “If you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford.” Shots fired. Behind the scenes, Zuckerberg was said to be so angry with Cook, whom he had viewed as a partner atop the Silicon Valley mountain, that he ordered Facebook’s executive staff to only use Android phones, according to a [New York Times exposé on Facebook](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html) in November. That tiff aside, Changes in European law also heightened the debate around user privacy and provided another opportunity for Cook to double down. In October, Cook took the stage in Brussels at a privacy conference. During his keynote, Cook articulated a series of warnings about data being "weaponized against us with military efficiency," and "rogue actors" taking advantage of user trust to blur the lines of "what is true and what is false." "This crisis is real," Cook [said](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18017842/tim-cook-data-privacy-laws-us-speech-brussels). "It is not imagined, exaggerated, or crazy." He praised GDPR, the new privacy legislation in Europe, and urged the U.S. to follow its lead. Then he criticized Silicon Valley for calling for change in public, and then working to "resist and undermine it behind closed doors." One month later, [he told Axios](https://cheddar.com/videos/tim-cook-says-apple-will-embrace-inevitable-data-regulations) he believed government regulation of tech is “inevitable.” Senators are now working on legislation that would allow companies to be fined if they are found to have misused customer data or allowed it to be stolen. That bill could come as early as next year. For Cook, it would be a validation of his outspokenness, though he is not the first Apple CEO to take a hard line on privacy rights. A year before his death, Steve Jobs drew the battle lines that Cook advanced in 2018, [remarking on a spat Apple was having with Google](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqB): “Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for — in plain English, and repeatedly.” The fact that Jobs was taking aim at Google then, just as Cook is taking aim at Facebook now, is no accident. Both Facebook and Google rely almost entirely on ad revenue, creating a digital advertising duopoly by using the mountains of data they collect to target better ads to their billions of users. That makes them boatloads of money, but opens them up to criticism and backlash of the sort they faced this year. By contrast, Apple has a different business model. It became a trillion-dollar company by telling consumers: pay us a lot of money up front for our hardware, and we’ll leave you alone. However, that business model is changing: the company's reliance on the iPhone as a revenue and profit-driver is shrinking and shifting toward software software and services, the turf that Google and Facebook play on. Perhaps this is Cook's way of setting Apple apart from these other software-reliant giants ahead of any increased scrutiny and "inevitable" regulation. So for Cook, being outspoken on these issues isn’t just a moral imperative. It’s good business.
