We’re finding out today that Apple was originally in talks with the AdMob folks, and they were looking to purchase up the company. That’s big news in and of itself, but the implications that purchasing AdMob has on next generation Apple products is a little alarming.
I have a little theory about business practices, and I’ve been talking about it quite a bit with friends and colleagues quite a bit lately. It’s flawed, but offers up some explanations that I think might just pertain to this scenario.
We NEED more MONEY!
Businesses can only be so efficient. There’s a point that a company can no longer increase efficiency, and thereby increasing their profit margins. At some point, when maximum efficiency is reached something else has to be done to increase profits. Sometimes it’s extending a product line, or finding new markets for your products, other times it’s underhanded tactics that are aimed at screwing over customers. Pressure from shareholders, and board members has to be overwhelming at times, so there’s no wonder that some companies start trying to cut corners to maximize profits, or in the case of Apple add advertisements to an operating system we’re already paying for.
This is all speculation, and there’s no evidence to support the ideal, but we can conjure up images of AdMob ads in the menubar along side our menubar items, quite easily. It wouldn’t take much to implement it, and it would certainly be another revenue stream that could help maximize profits. For a company that prides itself on thinking different, it sure looks like Apple Inc is starting to think a little bit like Google Inc.. Consumers might be able to get on board with an advertisement based operating system, if it means that prices for operating systems, and software either disappears, or are reduced substantially. Google can offer up free software because of their ads, and it works for them, but would it would for Apple? More importantly, would Apple even adopt that model fully, or would they prefer to create a hybrid model that lets them maintain revenue streams from both ends, the consumer and the advertiser.
We’re not sure where this is heading, but we can be sure that we’re heading towards ad supported software models. Google survives on it, iPhone developers survive on it, so it’s only a matter of time until Apple Inc. tries to survive on it. If anyone can make no-obtrusive advertisements work with an operating system UI then it’s Apple Inc.
Increasing Revenue at the cost of consumers privacy
What worries me the most is the demographics that are being recorded by the operating system, should Apple decide to embed ads in their OS. Would it act like google’s advertisements currently do? Do we really want Apple scanning our hard drives for keywords that can later be used to market to the user? I’m not sure it’s the answer, and I’m certainly skeptical about what that means for my privacy. The reason is works for Google is that users have the ability to take a step away from their services if they feel that some information is too sensitive to be passed through google’s servers. If similar technology is implemented at the operating system level, we’re stuck. We’re locked in, and there’s not much we can do about it. I’m not sure that’s a future we want to be striving towards.
What would make this workable for you? Would you do it if it meant you got free operating systems from Apple, or would you avoid it altogether?
