Google Inc’s US$750 million acquisition of mobile ad service AdMob cleared its final hurdle on Friday with a boost from AdMob’s jilted suitor, Apple Inc.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it unanimously decided to approve Google’s AdMob deal mainly because of Apple’s recent push into the US$600 million mobile advertising market in the US. The ruling closes a six-month antitrust investigation.
The emergence of another deep-pocketed competitor eased the FTC’s concerns that Google would be able to use AdMob as a springboard for extending its dominance into the nascent field of wireless devices.
“The presence of Apple made it for hard for the commission to construct a merger challenge that it felt it could win,” said Jeff Shinder, a New York antitrust lawyer who is a former special counsel to the FTC.
Apple’s role in persuading the government to sign off the deal is a weird twist because the maker of the iPhone and iPad was negotiating to buy AdMob before Google swooped in with a higher bid in November.
Shortly after the AdMob snub, Apple bought a smaller mobile ad service, Quattro Wireless, that is providing the technology for the iAd platform that persuaded the commission to sign off on Google’s deal.
Now that it has regulators’ blessing, Google said it would take over AdMob within the next few weeks.
AdMob, launched four years ago by Omar Hamoui, runs a network that delivers targeted advertising to Web sites and to online applications tailored for smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android software.
This marks the second time in three years that the FTC has launched an extensive investigation into a Google acquisition aimed at expanding its share of the digital ad market. The commission spent a year examining Google’s US$3.2 billion acquisition of online ad service DoubleClick Inc before approving it in March 2008.
The commission had feared that a combined Google-AdMob would thwart competition and possibly have a ripple effect on the mobile phone applications that rely on ads.
Combined, Google and AdMob will have a 21 percent share of the US mobile ad market, followed by Millennial Media at 12 percent, according to the most recent statistics from International Data Corp.
Yahoo is next at 10 percent followed by Microsoft at 8 percent and Quattro Wireless at 7 percent.
The big question now is whether Google and Apple will be able to leverage their advertising networks and widely used platforms for mobile applications to create an effective duopoly in the market.
Industry analysts and mobile ad executives are skeptical and predict that other major companies will try to muscle into the market with acquisitions of their own. Other mobile ad services still in play include JumpTap, GreyStripe, Mojiva and Mobclix.
Microsoft and even some magazine publishers developing applications for mobile devices may emerge as buyers, eMarketer analyst Noah Elkin said.
“A lot of molds have been broken in terms of who might try to get into this space,” Elkin said. “Everyone wants access to this mobile audience.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last