Apple threw shade on Amazon with the stealthy selection of its very own HQ2
- Apple announced on Thursday that it is spending $1 billion on a new campus in Austin, Texas.
- Its stealthy process of selecting the campus contrasted with Amazon's drawn-out HQ2 beauty parade.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook said he did not like the idea of creating a contest between bidders.
- Apple's own HQ2 plan looks like another effort to paint the firm as the responsible bastion of big tech.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has made a habit of aiming thinly veiled barbs at his rivals, and his latest manoeuvre looks like it could be ripped from the same playbook.
With little fanfare, the company announced it's going to drop $1 billion on a new headquarters in Austin, Texas on Thursday. It followed a stealthy selection process, which Cook fired the starting gun on in January.
The difference between Apple doubling down on Austin, where it already has a reported 7,000 staff, and Amazon's drawn-out beauty parade for its second quarters could not be starker.
And while Apple would probably say its selection process had nothing to do with Amazon, Cook did make a point of outlining the differences in their approaches earlier this year.
"We've narrowed the list a lot," Cook said of potential sites, in a January interview with ABC News. "We wanted to narrow it so we prevent this auction kind of process that we want to stay out of."
He later doubled down on his remarks, according to CNBC reporter Paayal Zaveri. She quoted Cook as saying: "We didn't want to create this contest, you wind up putting people through a ton of work to select one, that is a case where you have a winner and a lot of losers. I don't like that."
In an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher, he added: "That's not Apple."
The resulting process has been supremely hush-hush. The closest we got to a sniff of Apple's plans included reports like Cook meeting officials in Virginia and a secret sit-down with North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. Apple also threw ABC News off the scent by saying its campus outside of California is unlikely to be in Texas.
In contrast, Amazon's process was a public spectacle which began in September last year. In the 14 months that followed, Amazon received proposals from 238 locations, courted attention from governors, mayors, and bureaucrats in a reality TV-style contest, and eventually decided to split its headquarters between New York City and Northern Virginia.
People were unhappy and the entire process was branded a "sham." One losing bidder said: "Big tech is at a pivotal moment, and Amazon is at the head of the class. It is time for them to aggressively think not just about their bottom line but about ways they can do right by the world."
No such allegations are likely to be slung at Apple after its Austin announcement.
During a year in which Tim Cook has consistently sought the moral high ground, on issues including data privacy, Apple's very own HQ2 plan looks like another effort to paint the firm as the responsible bastion of big tech.