Consumer groups ask FTC to block Google's AdMob deal
Consumer Watchdog and the Center For Digital Democracy have requested that the Federal Trade Commission block Google's $750 million acquisition of AdMob on both anti-trust and privacy issues.
According to a report by TechCrunch, The FTC has already been actively reviewing the AdMob acquisition over the past weeks since Google announced its plans to buy up the mobile advertising.
Apple had started talks to acquire AdMob just weeks before Google announced its deal, ostensibly in an effort to prevent Google from obtaining detailed information about Apple's iPhone App Store.
Other smaller competitors in the fledgling mobile advertising market have also raised concerns that Google could leverage its existing AdSense and DoubleClick programs to effectively monopolize the emerging market for mobile ad placement within third party apps.
Google's $750 million purchase of AdMob is the third-largest acquisition in its history, behind only the $3.2 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2008 and the $1.65 billion takeover of YouTube in 2006.
Monopolizing mobile ads without privacy protection
The new complaint filed by the consumer groups echoes those concerns, saying the deal would, "substantially lessen competition in the increasingly important mobile organizing market," and that, as it is proposed, "would be harmful to consumers, advertisers and application developers."
However, the complaint goes beyond antitrust issues to note that mobile ads provide deep and significant information to the company managing them, potentially including the user's location and detailed record of their behavioral history, age, ethnicity, gender and other information.
"U.S. consumers currently do not have meaningful safeguards protecting their privacy online, including with behavioral targeting. This is particularly true of the mobile Web where there are no meaningful federal policies to effectively protect privacy," the complaint stated. "Permitting the expansion of mobile advertising through the combination of these two market leaders without requiring privacy guarantees poses a serious threat to consumers."
Managing the news
AdMob has regularly reported aggregated statistics culled from its network of ad views, which has provided reporters with new insight into the rapid increase in the influence of the iPhone as a platform.
Following its planned acquisition by Google, the monthly AdMob report almost entirely ignored any detailed mention of iPhone, which AdMob only noted in passing as having achieved half of all data traffic and a third place 18% of unit sales, to instead detail metrics related to Google's distantly fifth place Android platform, which it said represented an 11% share of data traffic and just 3% of unit sales.
According to a report by TechCrunch, The FTC has already been actively reviewing the AdMob acquisition over the past weeks since Google announced its plans to buy up the mobile advertising.
Apple had started talks to acquire AdMob just weeks before Google announced its deal, ostensibly in an effort to prevent Google from obtaining detailed information about Apple's iPhone App Store.
Other smaller competitors in the fledgling mobile advertising market have also raised concerns that Google could leverage its existing AdSense and DoubleClick programs to effectively monopolize the emerging market for mobile ad placement within third party apps.
Google's $750 million purchase of AdMob is the third-largest acquisition in its history, behind only the $3.2 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2008 and the $1.65 billion takeover of YouTube in 2006.
Monopolizing mobile ads without privacy protection
The new complaint filed by the consumer groups echoes those concerns, saying the deal would, "substantially lessen competition in the increasingly important mobile organizing market," and that, as it is proposed, "would be harmful to consumers, advertisers and application developers."
However, the complaint goes beyond antitrust issues to note that mobile ads provide deep and significant information to the company managing them, potentially including the user's location and detailed record of their behavioral history, age, ethnicity, gender and other information.
"U.S. consumers currently do not have meaningful safeguards protecting their privacy online, including with behavioral targeting. This is particularly true of the mobile Web where there are no meaningful federal policies to effectively protect privacy," the complaint stated. "Permitting the expansion of mobile advertising through the combination of these two market leaders without requiring privacy guarantees poses a serious threat to consumers."
Managing the news
AdMob has regularly reported aggregated statistics culled from its network of ad views, which has provided reporters with new insight into the rapid increase in the influence of the iPhone as a platform.
Following its planned acquisition by Google, the monthly AdMob report almost entirely ignored any detailed mention of iPhone, which AdMob only noted in passing as having achieved half of all data traffic and a third place 18% of unit sales, to instead detail metrics related to Google's distantly fifth place Android platform, which it said represented an 11% share of data traffic and just 3% of unit sales.
Comments
I can't believe that Sprint has given the GPS data of millions of it's phone customers 8 million times to big brother to track people. I suspect AT&T and Verison is doing the same.
I also heard on TV (CNBC) that the Feds are using cell phone calls to "map" your contacts of everyone your in touch with, trying to discover who and what you have contact with.
It's the get everyone and eliminate the good and follow the questionable approach.
With the insecurity of the iPhone and any App can have the potential to data mine and send it to god knows who.
Nice little rat right in your pocket.
Yes, someone please defang the security and privacy invading Google data mining whore b*tch for marketing companies and their chief buyer Uncle peeping tom Sam and his goon squads who can't stop one guy bomb laden guy from Nigeria of all places but is adapt at witch hunting and harrasing it's own loyal citizens.
I can't believe that Sprint has given the GPS data of millions of it's phone customers 8 million times to big brother to track people. I suspect AT&T and Verison is doing the same.
I also heard on TV (CNBC) that the Feds are using cell phone calls to "map" your contacts of everyone your in touch with, trying to discover who and what you have contact with.
It's the get everyone and eliminate the good and follow the questionable approach.
With the insecurity of the iPhone and any App can have the potential to data mine and send it to god knows who.
Nice little rat right in your pocket.
Stop trip'n... lot's of conspiracy theory here... we all know Uncle Sam isn't that organized.
big brother to track people.
You really aren't that important. Neither am I.
Big Brother can track me all he/they/it likes. It'll be a pretty boring stakeout. If Noam Chomsky can get away with what he publishes in the US, and if Michael Moore gets as much airtime as he does, and if crazy, racist, Jew-hating nutjob Anne Coulter gets as much airtime as she does without someone muzzling her, then your porn/fetish surfing and Craziest Crashes YouTube video watching won't really get you into any trouble.
Worried about privacy? Don't be. If you have a bank account/mortgage/credit card, your privacy is only as good as that which is provided by the institution(s) you hold accounts with. Don't make your car payment for two months or hold off on credit card payments and you'll see right quick how much "privacy" you really have. Your credit report has nearly everything about you on it. Current/past employers, financial assets, addresses, ID numbers, even names of family members that can be contacted in order to get info on your whereabouts, you name it. And all financial institutions have access to this, including collection agencies. I did accounts recovery for over 10 years here in Canada, and very often I knew more about an individual's financial history, past addresses, current/previous homes and their value, payment habits, fixed/liquid assets than they did, and there exist a boatload of industry tools to get even more information on you (limited by law in certain respects), even down to good old-fashioned calling every last name in the phonebook that matches yours and hopefully getting one of your relatives on the phone.
Besides, there is certain information about you that by law, cannot be released to any entity without a court order, provided such information is collected in the first place.
You should be far more worried about your bank keeping your account and credit information secure than about Google throwing ads at you based on your surfing habits.
You really aren't that important. Neither am I.
Yep, I'm a boring Machead poster on AI that has not many equally intelligent around folks around him to converse and explore tin foil hat theories with. That's me, profile me all you want Google.
You really aren't that important. Neither am I.
Big Brother can track me all he/they/it likes. It'll be a pretty boring stakeout. If Noam Chomsky can get away with what he publishes in the US, and if Michael Moore gets as much airtime as he does, and if crazy, racist, Jew-hating nutjob Anne Coulter gets as much airtime as she does without someone muzzling her, then your porn/fetish surfing and Craziest Crashes YouTube video watching won't really get you into any trouble.
Worried about privacy? Don't be. If you have a bank account/mortgage/credit card, your privacy is only as good as that which is provided by the institution(s) you hold accounts with. Don't make your car payment for two months or hold off on credit card payments and you'll see right quick how much "privacy" you really have. Your credit report has nearly everything about you on it. Current/past employers, financial assets, addresses, ID numbers, even names of family members that can be contacted in order to get info on your whereabouts, you name it. And all financial institutions have access to this, including collection agencies. I did accounts recovery for over 10 years here in Canada, and very often I knew more about an individual's financial history, past addresses, current/previous homes and their value, payment habits, fixed/liquid assets than they did, and there exist a boatload of industry tools to get even more information on you (limited by law in certain respects), even down to good old-fashioned calling every last name in the phonebook that matches yours and hopefully getting one of your relatives on the phone.
Besides, there is certain information about you that by law, cannot be released to any entity without a court order, provided such information is collected in the first place.
You should be far more worried about your bank keeping your account and credit information secure than about Google throwing ads at you based on your surfing habits.
Superbly put.
i don't know if there are any antitrust issues with google's purchase, but they sure know how to find innovative companies to acquire. then you take a look at people like yahoo, who make stupid acquisitions like broadcast.com, wasting 5.7 billion on essentially nothing. or 3.6 billion for geocities, which they just recently closed down. (not saying yahoo hasn't made any good acquisitions)
at least google is dominant due to its innovation. lots of companies are dominant due to government lobbying or consumers "needing" the product (e.g. oil and telecom companies)
Yes, someone please defang the security and privacy invading Google data mining whore b*tch for marketing companies and their chief buyer Uncle peeping tom Sam and his goon squads who can't stop one guy bomb laden guy from Nigeria of all places but is adapt at witch hunting and harrasing it's own loyal citizens.
I can't believe that Sprint has given the GPS data of millions of it's phone customers 8 million times to big brother to track people. I suspect AT&T and Verison is doing the same.
I also heard on TV (CNBC) that the Feds are using cell phone calls to "map" your contacts of everyone your in touch with, trying to discover who and what you have contact with.
It's the get everyone and eliminate the good and follow the questionable approach.
With the insecurity of the iPhone and any App can have the potential to data mine and send it to god knows who.
Nice little rat right in your pocket.
You suspect? The only Telco that told the Bush Administration to stick it is Qwest.
Oh... and that was a GREAT post Quadra610!
And while I don't always agree with ya MacTripper... you did touch on a certain amout of frustration I've been having believing this recent terrorist scandal.
So now every grandma and the kids are going to by body-searched at the airport, because of a "known" and listed highly-probable terrorist attempts an attack? Un-be-lievable!
If people are afraid of Google taking over everything on the Internet, maybe they should used BING, Yahoo, Ask.com, or some other search engine, and not support Google with their patronage or ad dollars.
"U.S. consumers currently do not have meaningful safeguards protecting their privacy online, including with behavioral targeting. This is particularly true of the mobile Web where there are no meaningful federal policies to effectively protect privacy," the complaint stated. "Permitting the expansion of mobile advertising through the combination of these two market leaders without requiring privacy guarantees poses a serious threat to consumers."
This is not an argument against Google's acquisition of Admob, so much as it is an argument against Admob itself.
I personally don't understand the hate on Google. If I'm going to be forced to watch ads in return for free content, I certainly would rather have them targeted ads to my interests.
This is where I disagree... Letting Google crawl my emails and tracking my navigation habits for the purpose of selling me ads, in return of me getting some average good-enough but well, free content...
I would rather pay for add-free premium content !!!
It is already easy to experience the frustration of the ad-based free content model with the iPhone apps for example...
Most of the ad based free apps are feature crippled... Make you wait 10s at start up while they show you some ads... Will hang or behave funny if no network is available when they try to fetch new ads from the net... Will make it too easy to be redirected to a sponsor page online... Will dedicated some of the screen real estate to an ad banner at the detriment of the app user experience...
You really aren't that important. Neither am I.
Big Brother can track me all he/they/it likes. It'll be a pretty boring stakeout. If Noam Chomsky can get away with what he publishes in the US, and if Michael Moore gets as much airtime as he does, and if crazy, racist, Jew-hating nutjob Anne Coulter gets as much airtime as she does without someone muzzling her, then your porn/fetish surfing and Craziest Crashes YouTube video watching won't really get you into any trouble.
Worried about privacy? Don't be. If you have a bank account/mortgage/credit card, your privacy is only as good as that which is provided by the institution(s) you hold accounts with. Don't make your car payment for two months or hold off on credit card payments and you'll see right quick how much "privacy" you really have. Your credit report has nearly everything about you on it. Current/past employers, financial assets, addresses, ID numbers, even names of family members that can be contacted in order to get info on your whereabouts, you name it. And all financial institutions have access to this, including collection agencies. I did accounts recovery for over 10 years here in Canada, and very often I knew more about an individual's financial history, past addresses, current/previous homes and their value, payment habits, fixed/liquid assets than they did, and there exist a boatload of industry tools to get even more information on you (limited by law in certain respects), even down to good old-fashioned calling every last name in the phonebook that matches yours and hopefully getting one of your relatives on the phone.
Besides, there is certain information about you that by law, cannot be released to any entity without a court order, provided such information is collected in the first place.
You should be far more worried about your bank keeping your account and credit information secure than about Google throwing ads at you based on your surfing habits.
It pains me to say this but...Well said.
PS.
I don't think it's practical to fret over conspiracies, you want justice, pray to the Almighty.
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