Mark Zuckerberg calls Apple CEO Tim Cook's view on ad-supported business 'ridiculous'

"A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers," Zuckerberg told Time. "I think it's the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you're paying Apple that you're somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they'd make their products a lot cheaper!"

He was referring to comments made by Cook in an open letter penned by the Apple CEO in September, in which Cook spelled out Apple's approach to consumer privacy. Apple's is superior, Cook argued, because the company does not depend on user data to make money.

"A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you're not the customer," Cook wrote at the time. "You're the product."

Facebook has not come under the same powerful privacy microscope as Google, though the social network has had its share of public relations stumbles, particularly in relation to reports of its participation in the NSA's PRISM program. Zuckerberg told The Atlantic last year that the association had harmed public perception.

"The trust metrics for all of them went down when PRISM came out," he said at the time. "This is one of the reasons we are pushing so much for transparency."