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Google Slams Apple Over iPhone Ad Ban
crimeandpunishment writes "This real-life clash of the titans could be much more interesting than the movie. Today Google fired the latest volley in its war of words with Apple over mobile advertising. In a blog posting, the head of Google's mobile ad service, Admob, had harsh words for Apple's new restrictions concerning the iPhone and iPad ... calling them a threat to competition. There's a lot of money at stake ... the US mobile ad market, which is about $600 million, is expected to more than double by 2013."
One of the reasons Android is an important project for Google -- it makes them little, if any, money, despite a half-baked plan to sell their own handset -- is exactly this scenario. Google's fear was that a single vendor would have too much control to cut them out. So Android was birthed, and there are many vendors. And for those who might not know, any Android handset vendor has the full ability to replace Google with Bing, or to cut out Google ads in other forms, yet the "fragmentation" of the market ensures that there isn't an overly one-sided power distribution.
So is Apple being testy because of Android....or is this the gameplan all along, and Android was a good pre-emptive strike?
i'm pretty sure the anti-monopoly laws were for industries consumers wanted to protect
You can't reasonably run ads without analytics. The entire ad industry depends upon analytics.
When it's Apple and their closed platform apparently...
So Google gets into smartphones, browsers and operating systems, and then cries "Foul!" when Apple gets into online advertising? (OK, I know Apple's hardware restrictions are a valid issue, but still....)
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
So when you buy an iPhone, you accept that it's still Steve's? Wow.
Note that we're talking about ads in third-party applications. Meaning as a third-party application developer, Apple has now said "Oh, and by the way if you want to advertise, your only real choice is us." How is that defensible?
And do you accept that the Safari browser on the iOS devices has the right to purge all web ads and replace them with Apple ads? Why not, right?
This is why there aren't any ads for Six Flags inside Disney world.
How are they supposed to know how much to charge or how much to pay out if they aren't legally permitted to know how many users are being exposed to ads, how long the exposure is, what click-through/tap-through rates are, etc?
What Apple has done is not explicitly ban third party advertisers, but instead achieve that goal through crafty wording in their developer agreement.
The main block Apple has put up is that user location can't be given out to advertisers outside of the iAd system, it is probably going to be pushed as a privacy issue.
Not having used iOS 4, I can't really say if this is a good thing or a bad thing overall, but I do like knowing that there are restrictions in place on who gets to handle what info about me.
Personally, I have location awareness turned off so this doesn't really apply much to me, but the idea is the same.
This isn't a monopoly move either, Apple isn't forcing anything on anyone outside their own platform to do anything. Apple is doing the same thing cable and satellite providers have been doing all along. . . picking and choosing who gets to advertise where and how.
Apple's excuse is, they want to protect their customers privacy. In fact they treat them like 6 year olds but it isn't the issue, it is their excuse.
Google, still thinking entire planet thinks they are "good guys" has major problems with their corporate culture and actions based on that. From "updater" to "Google Chrome" with default settings, Google is always blamed (rightfully) for not respecting users privacy. Some already calls them private data leeching vampires.
Steve Jobs saw this coming and used "privacy" as excuse to lock down the "real" advertising (location/analytics) to their own network. Now Google pops up and complains, people will say to them "look to mirror".
Some panel of advertisers or some people from analytics community should be speaking, not them. Anyway, too late now.
Cable and satellite providers are the content distribution services. Of course they have a right to decide who advertises on their networks. If Sony told cable and satellite providers that they weren't aloud to analyse what stations users were watching on their Sony TV, while Sony was at the same time polling all this information for themselves and feeding ad's to the sets, you'd be singing a different song.
Google should play hardball by creating more non-ad material (of high value to apple users), and displaying it in the same way the adds are displayed. Thus if the appleans want to consume it they will need to turn off the ad blocker, or switch to andriod. Be imaginative you only have one chance at suicide.
Rocket Surgeon.
The version of Chrome you link to is a BETA release.
If you don't like crashing, why not use the release version?
If you buy a device from vendor you are buying into whatever the vendor is selling. In this case your buying into the 'word of Steve' and the word of Steve today is 'the only ads you will see will be served by Apple'.
If you don't like it, don't buy it, that's the free market way.
(Honestly, despite Google crying foul this has 0 impact on consumers. Does anyone care who serves the advertising?)
]{
Why doesn't Google allow 3rd party ad networks? Why doesn't Google allow 3rd party ad networks in their SERPs (search engine result pages)?
Google's great at crying and bitching but they're the absolute worst monopolist in ad space today.
And do you accept that the Safari browser on the iOS devices has the right to purge all web ads and replace them with Apple ads? Why not, right?
Your actually very astute by pointing this out. The application advertising is only the first skirmish in the battle. Apple will almost certainly permit these ads to be shown in Safari using some kind of proprietary extension. Because iAD adds earn significantly more than AdSense these will get extensive adoption and significantly improve support for iOS devices.
It's a real smart move by Apple.
Why does the advertiser need to know what other applications I have installed, what my name is, what my credit card number is, how much money I spent in my last bricks-and-mortar store credit card transactions, or how long I spent playing "FarmVille" instead of "Bejewelled Blitz"?
The advertising industry has plenty of avenues to target their ads at people who will be interested in the product being advertised, if (a) the product is worth having in the first place and (b) they study demographics a little more.
Y'know, things like not advertising EVE Online to people browsing the Battleclinic kill boards. No-brainer there.
Ads on my gardening blog are nicely targeted due to the content of my blog - they don't need to know who is reading my blog to know that ads for Organic supplies, produce or how-to books will get clicked on.
The ad industry needs analytics like kids need added sugar.
You mean how they control who gets to license the blu-ray spec? Or how they controlled Betamax and kept it away from porn?
The notion that company y has a right to company x's capabilities and information is absurd. Google doesn't have to hand over all their ad data on me to Hulu and Apple, even though they collect the same general info for the same purpose. Apple isn't saying you can't advertise, they are saying you don't get things without joining the club.
As for your TV example, you are basing that off the status quo, one that does not fit here. When you buy an iPhone you go into knowing it is a semi-closed platform and that certain actions will be limited. If TVs were the same you'd go into it knowing that Sony only plays Sony branded/approved media and not Disney's or Warner's content. A better example would have been not being able to update the firmware on your TV without permission from Sony.
There are, however, ads for Direct TV on Cable TV. What's your point?
Yeah, exactly. The whole PC market was built on choice and freedom. Apple has always been about living in the Apple box, and getting some benefits like easier setup at the expense of being in a monoculture..
Although Apple has made some innovations, mainly on the design side, a lot of their innovations fail as well (Firewire?).. The PC has done far more to improve productivity, and the business of computers. If you're in the computer business, you owe it to the PC. Whereas if Apple had won, we would all be working for Apple.
Microsoft, for it's evil, was always just a publishing company. Apple is the tool of the publishing companies. They want to do away with the web, and replace it with a big "App Store". They don't want you to get stuff for free on the web any more. Anyway, the bottom line is that Apple is still swimming upstream. I'm surprised they made as much money with the iPod as they did, but I think that had as much to do with the economic bubble as it did the product. People with a extra money buy nice things, and Apple makes nice things. But not everyone can drive a Porsche, and that will be their eventual undoing, again.
I said a few months ago that APPL was a classic bubble, and the stock will never get over $275 and it still hasn't. People are getting tired of it, the novelty is wearing off, and they just want a cheap phone that does what they want it to do. I think the phone manufacturers have gotten the message and now it's up to the carriers to provide as much bandwidth as possible. Android and Windows Mobile are the long tail and RIM will continue to be the choice of the enterprise professional.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Uh, since Apple runs the app store, like it or not, they're the content distribution service as well.
They're not controlling what ads show up on web pages, which are not part of the delivery system of the app store.
Like it or not, the GP's example was apt.
The CB App. What's your 20?
You can't reasonably run ads without analytics. The entire ad industry depends upon analytics.
And this is mostly Google now. AdMob was the largest of them all and now that Google bought them...
The main reason I don't like Android is Google: With it Google gets your email, your contacts, your searches, your calendar, your location, the maps you look at, the places you navigate to, the RSS-feeds you read, your voice profile and of course they track you via ads. Probably even more things I forgot right now. This is creepy. This is much too much data to give to *one* company that can easily connect all the dots and knows more about you than yourself then. Evil or not evil, this is too much.
I'm totally surprised that people are being that ignorant of the fact that Google is inserting its tentacles in every orifice of your digital existence while whispering "It won't hurt... no, it will feel good and it's totally free" and people are crying for more. Right, you just have to give them your digital soul and your digital blood, nothing more.
Apple is with no doubt just protecting its assets with this, but it's their right and Apple users should be happy about it anyway. This new war between Apple and Google is a most effective firewall between them: Apple won't share your data with Google and Google won't share theirs with Apple.
The "cloud" means you have to give more and more of your personal data to some company; giving different data dimensions to different companies being at war with each other is the least you can do.
Bullshit. Apple runs the site for the open source project. It's derivation from KHTML is in the very first paragraph of the page.
http://webkit.org/
Also on Apple's corporate description of Webkit. Again, very first paragraph.
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/internet/webkit.html
Do I complain about Apple's closed system, or Google's privacy concerns?
Man, if only Microsoft were in this story, I'd have the geek-complaint-hat-trick!
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I never thought i would say this but darn it, we are lucky Apple didnt win against Microsoft. Apple will if given enough market share make Microsoft look pretty tame.
Steve seems intent on using any leverage against competitors no matter how bad the outcome is for the customers. Microsoft does this too but not at this level, probably because of antitrust concerns.
Apple seemed like a nice company but recent moves has changed that perception almost completely. If given the opportunity they will be just as bad for computing in general as Microsoft has been for the last 20 years.
Steve Jobs are a huge douchebag and the best we can hope for is cooperation between Apple and Microsoft. That way they can stab each others back instead of ruining computing for the rest of us.
HTTP/1.1 400
They are allowed to count click throughs. They just aren't allowed to pass any information about the user/device/location, that's all.
Shit, I'd better run out and get one!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You're missing the point, for many apps you will have the option of either purchasing a full price version or running an ad supported version so you can have exactly that choice. There will of course be paid apps with ads included but those most likely will either be unpopular or will be imitated by apps with the either/or model.
Back when cable TV was first conceived, broadcast TV had ads, and cable came out with no ads, as a paid service.
And now, today, there are of course cable TV stations with ads, but... wait, what were we talking about before the commercial?
-- Terry
Could it be that it's at the discretion of owner of the platform? That fits both scenarios.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/apples-evil-genius-plan-to-punk-the-web-and-gild-the-ipad.ars
Combined with Apple's HTML5 demo site that shut out non-Safari web browsers, it starting to look like Apple is becoming a very anti-Web company... even more so than Microsoft.
I've been a Mac fan since 2004, but Apple has gone too far: They want to see then end of the Web and the personal computer now. They can go to hell.
I can't tell if you're trolling, but not much of this makes sense.
(a) How does the language of the native API on platform X have anything to do with its "openness"? Yes iOS is objective-C and Android is Java. Openness has everything to do with what you exclude. Anyone is free to deploy a C program to Android, using a C-to-Java-bytecode interpreter for example. The converse is not true for the iPhone, where Java in any form is strictly disallowed.
(b) How can you make statements about Chrome OS, when it isn't even released? Do you have spies inside Google?
(c) Where did Google claim that "Adobe Flash is open"? Either come up with a citation, or admit you're just making shit up.
(d) It was the Manhattan Project that destroyed the PhD brand, if anything the tech companies collectively are restoring it.
Apple literally does not have a monopoly on smart phones.
Of coarse that doesn't make a ban on Google's advertisements OK. But the article says Google's ads themselves are not being banned, just the collection of personal data under certain circumstances. The article itself doesn't say that Apple is collecting the kind of data it is preventing Google from collecting. If Apple isn't collecting that data then it doesn't gain a competitive advantage by banning Google's data collection, it just levels the playing field while allowing Apple to protect user's privacy.
I tried the Google online Monopoly. It was kind of fun for about a day or two.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Am I missing something on the privacy front, here? You say "The main block Apple has put up is that user location can't be given out to advertisers outside of the iAd system [...] I have location awareness turned off so this doesn't really apply much to me, but the idea is the same." It is clearly not the same. Saying "We won't give out your location" is in no way the equivalent of saying "We'll only give out your location to people who pay us", in which case you're afforded precisely zero more privacy by this move than you would be if Google had access to the analytics, or do you somehow think that the people buying ads through Apple are in some way favourible to the people buying ads through Google? (The answer, of course, is that they're the same people).
The iphone is dangerous near monopoly status.
And don't tell me to look at market share, RIM and Nokia are both running on inertia, it's only a matter of time before they fall.
The iphone platform is becoming the "standard" for mobile apps, much like Windows is on the desktop.
I for one do not want a repeat of Windows, especially not with Apple.
Those bastards are worse than Microsoft when it come to choice.
Living under the dictatorship of Steve Jobs, where you can't have something unless the Führer approves, would suck balls.
Fortunately things like the HTC phones and the new Samsung Galaxy S gives me a tad bit of hope.
Still they need to step it up a notch.
Uhhh....
"foaming at the mouth hatred"? where did you pull that one from?
Google is a competitor in a few areas, and in other areas apple has no desire to compete. If allowing google to be the default, but allow for other choices is "foaming at the mouth hatred", then he must really loathe Yahoo for not letting them even be the default.
Apple discovered that analytics data was being used against them, and they were pissed and banned analytics. Then when they re-allowed them, they said that it can be with a direct competitor. Which makes sense. A competitor's phone division if they have analytics, probably has first crack, and might have more access to that data then the rest of the world ever gets a chance too. So they want the analytics forms to be independent so that if data is made available everyone can get the same data, and they can get it at the same time. That makes sense.
And while Apple may not be as generous with the data they collect, they are not collecting data from their competitors handsets. Unless of course I missed the announcement about the iAd API for android?
So, a corollary: 1) Apple has a majority of the market share in smart phone app sales. Good for them. 2) Apple uses its majority market share in smart phone app sales to force everyone into their mobile ad platform. Monopolistic behavior, bad for the economy.
I think you'll find if you look at the underlying codebase that the lion's share of development was still done as KHTML
Spoken like someone who has never looked at the code. If you exclude:
then yes, most of it was done as part of KHTML. If you look at KHTML now, you'll see a lot of changes back-ported from WebKit. If you compare WebKit now to KHTML in 2002 (when WebKit was forked), you won't see very much common code at all. When WebKit was forked, KHTML was about 140KLoC. According to Ohloh.net, WebKit now is 715K lines of C++, 75K lines of ObjC, 34K lines of C, and a lot of various other things. Even if Apple had retained 100% of the KHTML code, it would now account for 10% of the total codebase. In reality, large chunks have been rewritten (KJS, for example), so it's now less than 5%.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is about whether [Company B] is leveraging their huge advantage in the Apps space to try and drive out [Company A]'s product, though. If they are, we call that "anti-competitive behaviour" and it's generally frowned upon because it goes against the principles of a free market. That's a whole world of difference to [Company B] made a better product than [Company A] who now feel threatened they will be outsold.
Oh, developers and advertisers will be allowed to know all that. They'll just have to wait for the brouhaha to die down so Apple can quietly introduce their spiffy "new" advertising service. Then they'll pay Apple, not the people who first developed the technology for the platform.
It's possible, maybe even likely, that Apple will bury the costs of the Apple branded service where it won't show. Then they'll piously tell the credulous world that they're giving away free service out of the goodness of their hearts. Sound familiar? It should.
This will be the Stacker case all over again. The platform owner is happy to let vendors make a little money if it sells the platform, but if somebody makes a little too much money, the platform owner forces the vendor to sell out on its terms or pay the consequences. It's worse because in the Stacker case you *could* continue to use Stacker on Windows if you liked it better. Many did that. But Microsoft shrunk the market for Stacker's product sufficiently that Stacker was no longer a viable business.
Apple is simply kicking Admob off the iPhone. None of its high minded justifications of user experience and malware protection apply here. *Apple* wanted to by Admob but failed, so obviously they don't think this is something that shouldn't be on their platform. Failing to buy the company themselves, now they want to stick their thumb in the eye of Admob's new owners.
And why not? Developers aren't going to be porting their Objective C apps to Android overnight. Users still have their apps -- they may even get fewer ads until Apple has replaced Admob. That's not sustainable, but since third parties can't provide advertising revenues to developers, Apple is surely going to create its own version of Admob.
In effect, Apple gets to take over revenues from the business Admob created without buying the business itself. How sweet is that?
This is what I've said all long about Apple's TOS. It really amounts to your committing to a Hobson's choice to any future changes Apple dictates: either eat them or close up shop. For the vast majority of small and even semi-hobbyist developers, this is an acceptable deal because you're only talking about making small amounts of money. But you'd be nuts as an entrepreneur to spend years creating the next big thing on the iPhone platform. Admob's backers got under the wire, but the next entrepreneur who sells his business will have to discount the value of that business by the probability of drawing Apple's displeasure.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
there is no going back and there is no way of "Ignore updates" of an app so you are stuck with a constant nagging update indicator.
This is intentional.. Apple wants forced updates.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
BAH! they lie.
They can do the SAME thing that the TV and radio ad people do.
If you think that the Cable TV and Radio and Print ad's get a nice analytics report back, then you're nuts.
you get to pay $X to run your ad X times a day for X days...
They can EASILY go back to that. They cant do low cost ad whoring, but that's a good thing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can't have a monopoly on your own store. That as ridiculous as whining that [insert random store of any kind] won't stock your product and whining that it's using it's "monopoly" to strangle you out of their stores. Such an argument has no merit and would be thrown out as ridiculous. No store is obligated to stock your product.