Google not worried about Apple’s Quattro acquisition

It seems pretty clear that Apple and Google are planning for a ruckus in the mobile app space. Google picked up mobile ad company AdMob in November, right under Apple’s noses; Apple responded by acquiring one of AdMob’s biggest competitors, Quattro Wireless.

Google, on their part, seems pretty blase about the upcoming battle, though. Over on the Google Public Policy Blog, group product manager Paul Feng wrote:

When we announced our planned acquisition of AdMob in November, we noted that the mobile advertising space is highly competitive — with more than a dozen mobile ad networks. In fact, the experts at MobiThinking recently called mobile advertising a “very fragmented” space, in which “no ad network is dominant” and “no one really knows what ad network is biggest.”
Today’s news that Apple is acquiring one of AdMob’s competitors, Quattro Wireless, is further proof that the mobile advertising space continues to be competitive. And with more investments and acquisitions in the space, including from established players like Apple and Google, that’s a sign that vigorous growth and competition will continue. That’s ultimately great for users, advertisers and publishers alike.

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In truth, there’s room for both Google and Apple in the mobile ad space: Apple will be happy if they can establish control the in-app advertising on their mobile touchscreen devices, while Google will be happy to control the rest of the market. Business isn’t a kilted sword fight amongst Queen-backed space vampires, after all. There can be more than one.

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John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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http://www.mobithinking.com mobiThinking
There’s plenty of room in mobile advertising for Google and Apple, they probably won’t notice each other much at all. Talk of war between the two in the media, in my humble opinion is ill-conceived.
The report that Google refers to is the mobiThinking guide to mobile ad networks, which profiles the leading mobile ad networks in full, Quattro, AdMob etc. Not one of the 15 networks profiled provided details of revenues â€“ which I believe to be the only decent way of working out the size of networks and hence their market share. Nor have they provided revenues to anyone else. Any estimates of size you read in the press are based on complex calculations that are fraught with difficulties or in some cases pure guesswork. Hence the point that no one really knows which one is biggest. The guide to ad networks is available free here, if you’d like to add a link to the article: http://www.mobithinking.com/mobile-ad-network-guide
Frank
You missed the whole intention behind Google’s blog post. They are trying to defuse FTC’s investigation of this market and Google’s purchase (“buying a monopoly”).
“is further proof that the mobile advertising space continues to be competitive”
This is lawyer speak.
Btw. Even though I don’t like Google buying itself this big in mobile advertising, I just can’t stand FTC. Too much Government on the internet already.