Apple announced back in January that it plans to create another campus and thousands of jobs somewhere, presumably away from its home base of Cupertino, Calif. On Wednesday, CEO Tim Cook said that the process won’t be a “beauty contest” like what Amazon is running in its ongoing search for HQ2.
“That’s not Apple,” Cook said during the Chicago taping of a special collaboration between Recode and MSNBC called “Revolution: Apple Changing the World.” (Hat tip to Axios for calling out the comments and tweet).
Apple CEO Tim Cook on Amazon’s contest for its second headquarters location: “We’re not doing the beauty contest. That’s not Apple.” #RevolutionCHI pic.twitter.com/TAKZDx3wmO
— Recode (@Recode) March 28, 2018
Apple has been clear that its growth plans, initially for technical support staff, are not meant to be a second headquarters. The company will not be putting out a request for proposals, the way Amazon did in attracting bids from locations all over North America.
The location of the Apple’s facility should be announced later in the year.
Amazon isn’t the only fellow tech giant in Cook’s crosshairs. In other recent comments, he’s gone after Facebook and has called for stronger privacy regulations in the wake of the social media giant’s latest scandal involving Cambridge Analytica.
“I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary,” Cook said, according to Bloomberg, after being asked if the use of data should be restricted in light of the Facebook incident. “The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life — from my own point of view it shouldn’t exist.”
On Wednesday, at the Recode/MSNBC event, Cook followed up on his stance.
“I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation,” he said. “However, I think we’re beyond that here.”
