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Comment by davidedicillo | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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