“Apple contacted AdMob a few weeks before Google made its bid, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations weren’t public,” Saitto, Womack and Guglielmo report. “AdMob, based in San Mateo, California, sells ads that appear on mobile phones.”
“The interest in AdMob highlights the increasing competition in the mobile-phone market between Apple, maker of the iPhone, and Google, the most popular search engine. Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board in July after serving for three years. At the time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that move was necessary because Google was entering ‘more of Apple’s core businesses,'” Saitto, Womack and Guglielmo report.
“Together, AdMob and Google will be the largest mobile- advertising company, with about 30 percent to 40 percent of the market, according to Karsten Weide, an analyst with researcher IDC in San Mateo,” Saitto, Womack and Guglielmo report. “Buying AdMob would have allowed Apple to expand into online advertising, a strategy that Nokia Oyj is pursuing, Weide said.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I sense a battle with Google and his Steveness coming on…
Gonna put an ad on my tombstone.
Gonna keep flowers on my grave in perpetuity.
Who says you can’t take it with you?
Not surprised that Apple was offered/sniffed, but selling ads isn’t their forte.
Google paid five times revenue, a pretty steep price, but that keeps out MSFT and others.
Starting to not google. But better them then Microsoft.
Funny thing about web ads?
They annoy me so much that I go out of my way to NOT shop those who shove them in my face, and where possible, I send my money to their competitors.
hahaha, nice Big Als MBP
i really dont see apple and google being serious competitors. they seem to have an fairly symbiotic relationship
am i the only one who sees a future utopia with apple dominating the high-end and google dominating the low-end (with uninspiring stale companies like micro$oft relegated to obscurity where they belong)?
Methinks Apple was sniffing around merely to boost the price Google had to shell out. I cannot imagine they were seriously interested.
I don’t believe the guy. Apple’s not interested in advertising.
This is by Connie Gugliemo of Bloomberg, so take it with a grain of salt. Also, did Steve Jobs give a reason for Schmidt’s resignation?
@ Sixvodkas
That’s why I will never rent from netflix. Those bastards sneak their ads on my MBP, even with adblock, of course with a certain Mac news sites permission.
@sixvodkas,
I’m with you 100%! I go out of my way to avoid viewing the annoying ads, and I refuse to buy from those companies. Well-mannered ads that are not distracting are a different matter.
I wonder when Apple will simply acquire its own search engine. Seems inevitable at this point.
I see an Apple vs. Google fight coming. And for a long time, too! The 2010 – 2020 decade will all be about Apple vs. Google.
I’m inclined to believe TommyBoy.
With the percentage of mobile traffic generated thru the iPhone, imagine what would happen to AdMob if Apple developed a proprietary version of serving ads on exclusively on iPhone/ iPods.
Apple, repeat, Apple is not Microsoft and I believe this story as much as Bill Gates saying he like Apple!
or better, this is just a BS story
@chris f:
No, you are not alone. You and I see the same thing. Apple/OS X/mobile OS X will own the high end and Google/Android will mop up the rest. Palm/WebOS will get bought (Nokia is the latest rumor) and Blackberry will maintain a solid corporate niche, too (albeit with a lot smaller share and influence).
I see no room for sorry ass Windoze Mobile with their late ‘010(!) Windoze 7 Mobile release date.
This next decade will right the wrongs of the 90’s, starting with major shrinkage for M$.
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
@Megame
If you don’t want to use Google, you don’t have to use Yahoo/Microsoft/Bing use Ask.com
I don’t think Ask.com has anything to do with M$. Their search results are decent.
Here is a bug in Leopard that made me loose some important files. I tested this in different Macs:
I had many text files in the .rtf and the .rtfd format. They were sorted by type inside a folder and I wanted to group them together. To group these text files together, I manually changed the .rtf extensions to .rtfd. Then, I opened these files using TextEdit and dragged an image inside each of the .rtfd text files. and tried to Save only (not with a new name).
Here is a step by step:
1- Open TextEdit and save a .rtf file
2- Manually change the extension to .rtfd
3- Open the .rtfd file and drag an image inside the text.
4- Try saving it. TextEdit will ask if you want to just Save it or Save with a new name. Click “Save” only.
5- Voila!!! Your file vanished forever !!!!
@Olmecmystic
Let’s hope you are right.
To Olmecmystic:
Here’s to hoping hubris will finally catch up to Ballmer.
@Edward:
A man went to the doctor and said “It hurts when I do this.”
The doctor said “So don’t do that!”
If you think you have found an actual bug, report it to
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
The antitrust watchdog should really look into Google and Admob deal – google has the monopoly over online ad market and extending this even more would damage competition over the long term
Edward,
Go to bugreport.apple.com, and file it.
-jcr
This wouldn’t have been Apple’s style. It would be much more like Apple to buy an underdog like Flurry or Medialets.