The Ads, Oh They Are A ComminThe Ads, Oh They Are A Commin

Apple and Google have been planning to leverage the popularity of mobile devices to serve up ads to enhance their bottom lines. Now that devices are powerful enough to browse the normal web and bandwidth concerns are minimal, this looks like the perfect time to jump in in a big way.According to The Deal.com, Apple lost the bid to acquire AdMob Inc. to Google, which paid $750 million for the company. I don't expect we'll see spam in our SMS inboxes from this, but rather ads in the form of services. Mapping data, movie times, news, weather, etc. could all be monitized. The mobile market is just too juicy to resist, so the relative ad-free world we've been in for the past decade on our phones is coming to an end.

What bothers me though is a patent that Apple is pursuing. The Deal.com mentions that Apple is looking at a technology that will force the user to view an ad before using their device. Presumably they wouldn't do something so stupid as to make you watch an ad when your phone rings making you miss the call, but if you just picked up your device to read emails or listen to music, you might be forced to learn more about mortgage rates in your area than you care to know at that moment.

That would surely cause a revolt among most users and would likely be hacked out of existence within a few days of having been launched. It irritates me though that Apple thinks they have a right to even consider this. You aren't renting the phone from them. You purchased it. If they want to offer free services subsidized by advertising, that is fine. Forced advertising though is taking it a bit too far. Let's hope someone at Apple on this project exercises some self restraint and shows some common sense before any product actually ships.