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."

Comments

And thus there was Android

[ergo98]

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?

Re:And thus there was Android

[CharlyFoxtrot]

So is Apple being testy because of Android....or is this the gameplan all along, and Android was a good pre-emptive strike?

I don't think so. Google was one of the most important partners when the iPhone got its start: Google search, Maps, Youtube it was all on there. Then they decided they wanted a piece of the pie instead of depending on Apple and started directly competing with them making inane jabs in the process comparing Apple to North Korea and targeting them in their presentations. Don't start a fight if you can't take a punch.

Re:And thus there was Android

[afidel]

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.

Re:Only the Analytics are banned

[ergo98]

You can't reasonably run ads without analytics. The entire ad industry depends upon analytics.

When is a monopoly not a monopoly?

[sortadan]

When it's Apple and their closed platform apparently...

Re:When is a monopoly not a monopoly?

[delinear]

And what you're missing is that the dictionary definition of monopoly has little to do with the legal definition. Now I'm not saying either party is right or wrong, but to just read out a dictionary definition and say Apple are in the right because of this strict interpretation ignores the fact that that's not how monopoly law works. There are many complexities to consider in both establishing, first, if there is an effective monopoly (and this doesn't mean you have to control the entire market, just enough of it to give you the ability to shut down competition, ala MS insisting in the past that hardware vendors had to buy a license for each machine they sold, even if it wasn't going to run windows, effectively negating the zero price point of open source alternatives - sure there were alternative OS vendors the hardware manufacturers could use, but they'd be shutting themselves out of the biggest market, ergo effective monopoly), and second, if there is an actual abuse of that monopoly. It's by no means not as clear cut as either side is claiming it to be.

Re:When is a monopoly not a monopoly?

[HermMunster]

First, this is Jobs (reality distortion fields envelop those emanating them), so no, they don't have 28%. Not even close. What do the other manufacturers claim they have? RIM is still number one. Android is growing much faster than Apple is, or did.

Second, they don't have a monopoly. Not even close.

Third, this is restraint of trade and illegal.

Re:When is a monopoly not a monopoly?

[Barsteward]

You're making perfect sense, but you have to understand that Toyota does not allow Google to put ads all over every Prius and track the location and store information about every Prius driver and therefore Toyota is a monopoly.
But Toyota can't stop Google putting an advert on a Prius, maybe not in the Toyota factory but once it leaves the factory it can.

Re:Are they...surprised?

[ergo98]

I mean it's not exactly startling that your direct competition doesn't want you advertising on their device.

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?

Re:Cry me a river

[recoiledsnake]

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....)

Google is crying foul not because Apple got into advertising, but because Apple banned companies owned by makers of other mobile operating systems from using analytics(critical for ads) on the iDevices. i.e Apple is specifically targeting Google just like it targeted Adobe last time around

Google should have stayed silent

[Ilgaz]

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.

Re:Google should have stayed silent

[Anonymous Coward]

> Some already calls them private data leeching vampires.
Generally just people who have an entirely different grudge with google, usually something along the lines of sour grapes that google doesn't let them unfairly twist the search/ad results in their favor.

> 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".

Steve wants to own his cake and eat it too. First apple makes the hardware, which it owns. Oh, but you can install third party apps! But only through the store which apple owns and controls. Oh, but it's also a communication device, it has web access! But apple controls what aspects of the web you're allowed to use. Apple and Google are on the extreme opposite ends of the lock-in control freak scale. Google may want a finger in every pie, but they don't prevent any other company from entering any layer of the market at any time.

Re:Cry me a river

[jpmorgan]

Uh, no. Google is crying "Foul!" because Apple is banning developers from using Google's ad platform in their apps. Conveniently, right at the same time as they introduce their own: iAd. Yes, ads suck and it's weird defending an advertising platform, but this is Google: the company that made ads useful and unoffensive (and just that slight bit creepy).

Apple are truly becoming the kings of rent-seeking and platform lock-in. It's far worse than anything Microsoft ever did.

Re:Are they...surprised?

[Kristoph]

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.

Re:Walled Garden

[Beelzebud]

There are, however, ads for Direct TV on Cable TV. What's your point?

Re:Google is hypocritical

[powerspike]

*IF* you bothered to look, you'll see that while it is googles own advertising platform on all of their products, they DO display ads from 3rd party networks,
In my adsense account, i even have an option to allow 3rd party ads via the google network, (my account -> account settings -> "Third Party Ads Preference" for reference).
Been able to show 3rd party ads on my own website via google's own network defeates alot of what people are saying here.
In *my* website i get to choose my ad provider if i want one. In my iphone app, i have to use apple's ad network, i built the app, why should i be restricted to apples own software/property for how to monitize it? locking out analytics for 3rd parties makes them useless, i'm not going to want to show ads about uk tv shows to american visitors and vice versa, this means any ads showen will be poorly targeted because of this, and the income per click is going to be extremely low.

Re:Cry me a river

[TheSunborn]

Quote:
"If a Ford makes a truck, do they have to allow GM to have a compatible engine for it?"

Yes they do. If I buy the truck there is nothing that Ford can do if I install a GM engine in it.

And I search for "advertiser networks" in google I do in fact get advertising from a a company which describe them self as
"Over 900 successful bloggers use BuySellAds.com to power their online ad sales. We help you sell ads better. We make your life easier."

But that is a bad example anyway, because there is an difference between a website you own, and a device you sell. I would not expect Apple to allow anyone to show advertising on their website or in Apples software, but neither would I expect Apple to have any control over what advertising 3 party software shows on devices once Apple have sold them(The device).

Good for users

[joh]

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.

Choices, choices...

[Anonymous Freak]

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!

Apple makes Microsoft seem moderate.

[miffo.swe]

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.

Re:When you gain it fair and square.

[Hognoxious]

Not having a monopoly is illegal

Shit, I'd better run out and get one!

Re:Google is hypocritical

[Gudeldar]

Talk about the a false equivalency. Google owns their web site and search results. Apple doesn't own the mobile apps in the app store, at least until they change the developer agreement to say they do. A real equivalent would be if Google said that anyone who wanted to show up in their search results had to use AdSense or they were banned from the index. People would be outraged, and rightly so. The FTC/DOJ would come down them very hard if they ever tried anything like that.

Re:Bizarro Google bullshit

[Stuntmonkey]

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.

Do you know what a monopoly is?

[fredmosby]

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.

Re:I'm not too upset about it

[Egdiroh]

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?

Re:When you gain it fair and square.

[mcferguson]

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.

Re:WebKit is based of of the KHTML

[TheRaven64]

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:

• The JavaScript engine.
• Most of the SVG support.
• Most of the DOM stuff.
• Most of the CSS support.
• All of the HTML 5 stuff (canvas, websocket, and so on).

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%.