What would you expect from a company that hems and haws over not selling literal swastika merch.

The ads are in the app store and about apps. Googles ads are all over the web and they’ve embedded trackers in every website that call home and tell google what you’re up to. Most android apps also have Google libraries in them that track you. Chrome monitors your off Google activity. Gmail extracts purchase receipts from online shopping and monitors your spending to serve ads. Meanwhile, Apple forced app developers to ask for permission to track users and pissed off the entire tech industry. The two are not the same from a user privacy perspective. Apple also does not have trackers all over the web and does not read your email. Also, $4.7 billion is peanuts to Apple. Their annual is roughly $400 billion. Ads for them are a fart in the wind. Google meanwhile makes 75% its money on ads. I don’t trust them at all.

You’re not even making an argument, just an assertion. Are you by chance a software engineer? If you really understand what Google is doing on a technical level, there is no comparison. No they are not the same. No Apple is not just as bad. Just think about it, Google makes their money selling businesses ads. Apple makes their money selling you a phone. The incentives are very different.

I personally do not trust Google at all. Their entire business model is ads and tracking.

Just use nextdns for ad blocking. You can install your own profile that is basically a pihole at the os level for cell and WiFi traffic. It blocks web ads, but also any trackers embedded in third party apps.