AdMob Chief Responds to Apple's New Developer Terms | Hacker News Reader

AdMob Chief Responds to Apple's New Developer Terms

macrumors.com

37 pointsdave161945 comments

In the spirit of truly controlling their supply chain, the only thing left for Apple now is to bid for wireless spectrum next...

Apple could probably sell iPhone service through an MVNO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator) but then, due to the Apple branding, they would get the blame for AT&T's poor infrastructure if they stayed with GSM.

AAPL 'cash': $23B (plus another ~$20B in liquid investments)

S (Sprint Nextel) market cap: $14B

CLWR (Clearwire) market cap: $7B

The other day I was wondering if Apple had so much of cash.. why do they not announce App developing competitions.. and that too very aggresively. For example if they announce a yearly $500 Million prize (aggregate), they will get so many cool apps for people and a lot of them can be free. The increased devices sales can alone cover for the prize value. What am I missing here?

There have been several articles recently about how money isn't a motivator for developers. But really, Apple is doing just fine getting cool applications, they don't need such a contest. If you have a really cool idea, are you waiting around for a contest to bother developing it?

Is a shortage of apps a major concern for Apple?

No, but shortage of free quality apps is, IMO.

Not a problem for Jobs...

Just as he is about the end of the Internet, he's about the end of free...

That Steve Jobs like money?

(I didn't vote you down but I can understand...)

http://blog.admob.com/2010/06/09/mobile-advertising-and-the-...

Direct link.

How else are iAds supposed to take off?

http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/07/iad-apple-steve-jobs/

It doesn't block other ads. It blocks analytics from competitors. So you are free to run analytics and ads from whoever you want... unless they are own by a device manufacture that directly compete with the iPhone.

Or unless they are owned or affiliated with a distributor of mobile devices, or unless they are owned or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile operating systems, or unless they are owned or affiliated with a developer of a mobile development environment, or unless their primary business isn't serving mobile ads. (And that's the advertising side. On the analytics side, it would appear to block all analytics software - the opposite of what you say above - but that's another discussion.)

Depending on how strictly Apple interprets 'affiliated with' and 'primary business', which aren't strictly defined in the license agreement, that's pretty much everyone in the space - even the 'independent' mobile ad networks have relationships with carriers, and carriers certainly distribute mobile devices.

It's a pretty typical Apple license agreement, really - it's extremely wide-reaching, open to interpretation, and the real question is how Apple will enforce it at any given point in time.

Uh, thanks, but I already know what the article I posted said. My point is, iAds will be an easy sell if all competitors are kneecapped.

I don't think you quite got it. Only mobile advertisers who also compete with Apple on devices and OSes are affected. This does not make all competitors "kneecapped".

Edit: Really? I'm getting downvoted for this? Gruber's point that Apple's critics won't let facts get in their way gets proven once again.

Still with the downvotes. Not that I care about losing points, but how badly does it reflect on you when you downvote someone for presenting a fact?

I hate to admit it but Apple can do whatever they want with their platform and has demonstrated they would rather hurt competitors at the cost of end users/developers. The sad thing is many end users (read comments on the blog) think it's wonderful. They are ecstatic that they don't have the option to install Flash.

Do Apple users think that Flash will transition 3 frames of PNG/JPG/GIF ads worse than a custom iAd/Apple solution?

Trendy Adobe hate aside, how terrible could it possibly be? In actuality, not delusional fanboy opinion.

Betting that it is not very different resource-wise.

Could apple change their developer contract to say anything they want?

This Apple vs Google thing is turning really ugly. Next is what Google will shut down maps and youtube apps on iPhone?

If that happens, it will be a loss for Google.

Bing Maps will do fine. Bing search will do fine for a large percentage of users. Youtube will be missed but its web app is pretty good now.

I'm amazed that the iPhone is still a contender without free turn-by-turn navigation. That and internet access are the only thing I use my phone for.

I would assume that blocking Apple would mean both removing iPhone app and blocking iPhones from all Google sites.

In fact, if Apple were stripping out Google ads (as per some rumblings), Google would have a basis to demand that all it's affiliates stop serving to iPhones as well.

War would be hell at that point. Probably some lawsuits in the making.

>Bing Maps will do fine. Bing search will do fine for a large percentage of users.

Assumptions that Microsoft is cozy with Apple are flawed. Microsoft is more at risk from Apple than they are with Google

I agree but why would microsoft not grab the chance to get the bing and maps to millions of people in one go?

War at the PC vs Mac/iPad front is a different thing, IMO.

Then maybe Apple can find another Youtube and Google Maps provider. Question is: will the branding stuck in our minds supersede what Apple's route to alternatives entail? All theoretical, nonetheless.

Wait, you're saying that Apple is again changing their terms for their own benefit?

Had we seen this coming, developers would have switched to a different platform.

Do you think Posterous would let Tumblr collect stats about all their users and their business? If you want to place ads using any other network you are free to do it, but you can't pretend that Apple will let Google, not the analytic company in this instance, but the iPhone competitor, collect stats about their users and business. Would you do that with your own business?

If Tumblr had an attractive analytics suite that users loved, I doubt Posterous would attempt to forbid its users from using it.

Apple placed a low-ball bid for for AdMob, when they got outbid, they figured they'd simply use their dominant market position instead of out-competing them. This sounds awfully like that other OS vendor that got in trouble for driving a lot of companies out of business by using their market dominance.

the problem is that those using AdMob, Google could find out about devices and features even before Apple release them. That's competitive advantage. Apple is a business, not a non-profit organization (just like Google), they need to defend their business. Want to be have ads? Go use Mobclix or other providers.

Apple is more than capable of not passing back information about devices and features prior to their release - for instance, instead of identifying their next iPad as 'iPad 1,2' during their internal testing, they could just send out 'iPad 1,1'. While they didn't disguise their test units in the past, I doubt they'll make this mistake again.

How could Google find out about devices and features before Apple releases them just using AdMob? They can't. Apple has to do it for them.

As for other advertisers, I'd be worried about Apple cuttng them out of the loop. It's not a matter of if, but when.

Yes, they would. If Posterous users opted in to such a feature by installing some Tumblr code on their site, Posterous would not block it.

In a vacuum, you're right, it makes business sense, but the effect is negative for consumers. There are laws that prevent this type of behavior. If Apple uses its position in the mobile hardware market to leverage Google out of the mobile advertising market, there is a pretty sound basis for calling that anti-competitive behavior. IANAL, so I don't know the details, but this is not unlike Microsoft pushing third-party browsers off of the Windows by denying OEMs privileges based on the browsers they install by default. The key here is that Microsoft had a monopoly. I'm pretty sure that comes in to play in the government's ability to step in.

A cursory inspection of Posterous will show that it uses Google analytics. Google runs Blogger. It's a direct competitor, even though Tumblr has a much more similar feature set.

So given that Posterous happily lets Google collect stats about all their users and their business, your hypothesis is patently absurd.

it is not the same. apple is not the owner of apps you make, they only distribute it. Imagine the world where a news paper distributor(news-stand) would limit the type of ads you run on your newspaper.

So...imagine this world, here, right now?

Wal-Mart, for instance, may sell newspapers, but they're well within their rights to not sell newspapers with, say, pornographic advertising.

noup. its not the same. wallmart is not selling porn magazines for the same reason they do not sell audio cables that cost 500$. It is not profitable for them.

it would be the same if wallmart said, all newspaper advertisements must come through me.

It's time somebody look for the undo button on the Google-Admob acquisition! ;)

Yes, because Admob doesn't work on Android which will soon have more market share than the iPhone ;)

Am I correct in stating that Apple does not need to be a full monopoly to be convicted of anti-competitive behavior? After all, we have both Anti-Trust and Anti-Competitive behavior laws on the books. AT simply gets more press as it is usually a populist movement.

I wonder if the FTC would be willing to investigate this.

Can anyone comment on exactly what types of data AdMob collects?

Stuff like IP address for geotargeting, the phone's UDID (a numeric identifier) for frequency capping and conversion tracking, the name of the app for obvious reporting reasons, and whether the ad's been viewed or clicked, again for obvious reporting reasons. Same as anybody else in the space.

Admob gives the option to advertisers to target by sex (male or female) and age group. So, I wondering if they're collecting some of this info somehow as well.

Is the site down for you guys?

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