Rumors of An iAd Antitrust Investigation Surface

Just a few days ago Apple updated their iOS 4 Terms and Conditions that effectively locked their main competitor, AdMob, from display advertisements and collecting user data on the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch altogether. Not longer after, AdMob responded and expressed their displease with the new Terms and Conditions stating that Apple is taking direct shots not only at AdMob but also at their parent company, Google.

When Apple first released these updated terms, many criticized them for taking away competition and making it so that mobile app developers could pretty much only use iAd for advertisements. However, there wasn’t much talk over whether or not Apple was breaking the law with their news Terms and Conditions. However, it seems that they may be.

Recent reports have surfaced over at the Financial Times that US regulators are planning to investigate Apple’s new iAd advertising platform with talks of an antitrust matter becoming rampant. The reason for this being (as stated above) the fact that the new Terms and Conditions featured in iOS 4 had locked Google out of their App Store and entire iOS platform in general.

If you’ll remember, this isn’t the first time rumors of Apple having trouble with the FTC have surfaced as back in May, Apple came under fire when they made it so that you could only use a specific programming language to make iPhone apps. Additionally, you should also remember that Google was under fire when they were first going to purchase AdMob. It wasn’t until Apple announced their acquisation of competing wireless ad network Quattro Wireless that the FTC gave Google the go ahead to purchase AdMob.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m very skeptical over this whole thing. If Apple is really doing what all of these rumors are saying and is intentionally shutting out the competition (Google) then the FTC definitely needs to step in and check things out.