WSJ: Federal antitrust probe about Apple's iAd service, too

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  • Reply 81 of 86
    shrikeshrike Posts: 494member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post


    As a ~$250B company (and the third most valuable in the US) it seems to be par for the course. Google will be next.



    Incidentally, it is also possible that the FTC may have been put up to this by Adobe, for all we know. If Adobe requested they do this, the FTC would be compelled to follow up.



    Adobe indeed submitted a request (Bloomberg):



    Apple Policy Said to Prompt U.S. Allegation by Adobe



    May 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. antitrust enforcers are considering an investigation of Apple Inc. following a complaint from Adobe Systems Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.



    Adobe says Apple is stifling competition by barring developers from using Adobe’s products to create applications for iPhones and iPads, said the people who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the case.



    The complaint triggered discussions between the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission over which agency should review the allegations of anticompetitive behavior, the people said. Neither agency has decided whether it would open an investigation, one person said.
  • Reply 82 of 86
    anantksundaramanantksundaram Posts: 20,404member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shrike View Post


    Adobe indeed submitted a request (Bloomberg):



    Apple Policy Said to Prompt U.S. Allegation by Adobe



    May 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. antitrust enforcers are considering an investigation of Apple Inc. following a complaint from Adobe Systems Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.



    Adobe says Apple is stifling competition by barring developers from using Adobe’s products to create applications for iPhones and iPads, said the people who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the case.



    The complaint triggered discussions between the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission over which agency should review the allegations of anticompetitive behavior, the people said. Neither agency has decided whether it would open an investigation, one person said.




    Very interesting (but unsurprising), thanks. If the WSJ did not point out this fact in its original article, then it is pretty shoddy reporting on their part.



    This is non-news.



    -----



    Add: The WSJ report says: "People familiar with the matter said the latest interest from regulators was triggered by complaints from Apple competitors and application developers over the terms of company's agreement with iPhone and iPad app developers."



    Apple 'competitors'!? Bloomberg specifically says Adobe. WSJ couldn't figure this out? Pretty shoddy work.
  • Reply 83 of 86
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Nothing apart from using a gmail account on it, using the YouTube app and logging in to make comments, using things like Gtalk, google docs etc in the Google App, logging in to the the Google earth,using a gmail account to log in to your Facebook account...



    ...nah, Google's got no idea of which device is logging into all these services.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by caliminius View Post


    There is nothing connecting your iDevice to your Google account.



  • Reply 84 of 86
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Where is it that Apple has said nobody but Apple can have the analytics data?



    Bueller? ...



    Bueller? ...





    Apple has said when you want analytics use our API.



    This is done so a programmer can't attempt to go jackbooting through a users phone in a way Apple can't see through a normal QA verification for the App store. As long as Apple doesn't throttle where the data from the analytic API calls go there really isn't much of an issue here at all other than showing regulators and intarweb denizens are woefully undereducated in the technical space. Or just that they forget to actually apply logic to what they read.



    That section is mostly Apple covering it's ass from a privacy suit standpoint. As long as Apple is making reasonable precautions to ensure a users privacy they avoid getting sued and auto-losing for giga-dollars when some programmer is successful at jackbooting through a users private data.



    How many time has this same merry-go-round been ridden and come to the same destination (nowhere)?
  • Reply 85 of 86
    This probably isn't a legal issue, but should be of interest to anyone who things iAd is going to be a better experience for the end-user:



    Quote:

    In other words, Apple is going to ensure advertisers that there'll be no way for users to get around playing their ads. In addition, Apple can further determine whether a user pays attention to the advertisement. The determination can include performing, while the advertisement is presented, an operation that urges the user to respond; and detecting whether the user responds to the performed operation. If the response is inappropriate or nonexistent, the system will go into lock down mode in some form or other until the user complies. In the case of an iPod, the sound could be disconnected rendering it useless until compliance is met. For the iPhone, no calls will be able to be made or received.



    http://www.patentlyapple.com/patentl...g-program.html
  • Reply 86 of 86
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    That was just a series of possibilities and what ifs culled from a reading of an Apple patent filing. The last thing I think Apple would do is to not take phone calls or let you listen to music if you won't play nicely with the ad. Dismissing the ad in these ways is actually important information in the analytics sense.
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