Prince McLeanAccording to a report by TechCrunch, The FTC has already been actively reviewing the AdMob acquisition over the past weeks since Google announced its plans to buy up the mobile advertising.
Apple had started talks to acquire AdMob just weeks before Google announced its deal, ostensibly in an effort to prevent Google from obtaining detailed information about Apple's iPhone App Store.
Other smaller competitors in the fledgling mobile advertising market have also raised concerns that Google could leverage its existing AdSense and DoubleClick programs to effectively monopolize the emerging market for mobile ad placement within third party apps.
Google's $750 million purchase of AdMob is the third-largest acquisition in its history, behind only the $3.2 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2008 and the $1.65 billion takeover of YouTube in 2006.
Monopolizing mobile ads without privacy protection
The new complaint filed by the consumer groups echoes those concerns, saying the deal would, "substantially lessen competition in the increasingly important mobile organizing market," and that, as it is proposed, "would be harmful to consumers, advertisers and application developers."
However, the complaint goes beyond antitrust issues to note that mobile ads provide deep and significant information to the company managing them, potentially including the user's location and detailed record of their behavioral history, age, ethnicity, gender and other information.
"U.S. consumers currently do not have meaningful safeguards protecting their privacy online, including with behavioral targeting. This is particularly true of the mobile Web where there are no meaningful federal policies to effectively protect privacy," the complaint stated. "Permitting the expansion of mobile advertising through the combination of these two market leaders without requiring privacy guarantees poses a serious threat to consumers."
Managing the news
AdMob has regularly reported aggregated statistics culled from its network of ad views, which has provided reporters with new insight into the rapid increase in the influence of the iPhone as a platform.
Following its planned acquisition by Google, the monthly AdMob report almost entirely ignored any detailed mention of iPhone, which AdMob only noted in passing as having achieved half of all data traffic and a third place 18% of unit sales, to instead detail metrics related to Google's distantly fifth place Android platform, which it said represented an 11% share of data traffic and just 3% of unit sales.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
16 Comments
It does give Google a commanding lead over the competition.
Yes, someone please defang the security and privacy invading Google data mining whore b*tch for marketing companies and their chief buyer Uncle peeping tom Sam and his goon squads who can't stop one guy bomb laden guy from Nigeria of all places but is adapt at witch hunting and harrasing it's own loyal citizens.
I can't believe that Sprint has given the GPS data of millions of it's phone customers 8 million times to big brother to track people. I suspect AT&T and Verison is doing the same.
I also heard on TV (CNBC) that the Feds are using cell phone calls to "map" your contacts of everyone your in touch with, trying to discover who and what you have contact with.
It's the get everyone and eliminate the good and follow the questionable approach.
With the insecurity of the iPhone and any App can have the potential to data mine and send it to god knows who.
Nice little rat right in your pocket.
Bad for competition, bad for me. Google is the only company that knows good companies and when to pick them up it seems. Cell phone advertising will be dominated by same players as desktop search, that is obvious, but I was hoping for a bit more equality in that field, cause it is relatively new and everyone is starting off at about the same point. Seems like yahoo and bing still don't get search.
Yes, someone please defang the security and privacy invading Google data mining whore b*tch for marketing companies and their chief buyer Uncle peeping tom Sam and his goon squads who can't stop one guy bomb laden guy from Nigeria of all places but is adapt at witch hunting and harrasing it's own loyal citizens.
I can't believe that Sprint has given the GPS data of millions of it's phone customers 8 million times to big brother to track people. I suspect AT&T and Verison is doing the same.
I also heard on TV (CNBC) that the Feds are using cell phone calls to "map" your contacts of everyone your in touch with, trying to discover who and what you have contact with.
It's the get everyone and eliminate the good and follow the questionable approach.
With the insecurity of the iPhone and any App can have the potential to data mine and send it to god knows who.
Nice little rat right in your pocket.
Stop trip'n... lot's of conspiracy theory here... we all know Uncle Sam isn't that organized.
big brother to track people.
You really aren't that important. Neither am I.
Big Brother can track me all he/they/it likes. It'll be a pretty boring stakeout. If Noam Chomsky can get away with what he publishes in the US, and if Michael Moore gets as much airtime as he does, and if crazy, racist, Jew-hating nutjob Anne Coulter gets as much airtime as she does without someone muzzling her, then your porn/fetish surfing and Craziest Crashes YouTube video watching won't really get you into any trouble.
Worried about privacy? Don't be. If you have a bank account/mortgage/credit card, your privacy is only as good as that which is provided by the institution(s) you hold accounts with. Don't make your car payment for two months or hold off on credit card payments and you'll see right quick how much "privacy" you really have. Your credit report has nearly everything about you on it. Current/past employers, financial assets, addresses, ID numbers, even names of family members that can be contacted in order to get info on your whereabouts, you name it. And all financial institutions have access to this, including collection agencies. I did accounts recovery for over 10 years here in Canada, and very often I knew more about an individual's financial history, past addresses, current/previous homes and their value, payment habits, fixed/liquid assets than they did, and there exist a boatload of industry tools to get even more information on you (limited by law in certain respects), even down to good old-fashioned calling every last name in the phonebook that matches yours and hopefully getting one of your relatives on the phone.
Besides, there is certain information about you that by law, cannot be released to any entity without a court order, provided such information is collected in the first place.
You should be far more worried about your bank keeping your account and credit information secure than about Google throwing ads at you based on your surfing habits.