Google says "Thanks, Apple!" as $750M AdMob deal approved
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has closed its investigation into the $750 million Google/AdMob buyout and given a green light to the deal. The reason is simple: Apple, Apple, and more Apple.
In its official statement (PDF), the FTC mentions "Apple" 10 times in a page and half, all because of Apple's own decision to launch a mobile ad network called iAd.
"The Commission reached this decision based on important developments in the mobile advertising marketplace, particularly actions by Apple that should mitigate the anticompetitive effects of Google’s AdMob acquisition," said the FTC. The vote in favor of closing the investigation was 5-0.
The Commission had been concerned over Google's dominance in online ads; purchasing one of the big iPhone ad players would have extended that dominance into the mobile space. Apple's announcement changes the game, though: "As a result of Apple’s entry, AdMob’s success to date on the iPhone platform is unlikely to be an accurate predictor of AdMob’s competitive significance going forward, whether AdMob is owned by Google or not. This is particularly important given that AdMob’s revenue and market share are derived largely from the iPhone platform."
Google, which has of late taken to publicly calling for quick action on the deal and vowed to fight a negative ruling, was predictably thrilled. "The decision is great news for the mobile advertising ecosystem as a whole," said the company in a statement today. "As mobile phone usage increases, growth in mobile advertising is only going to accelerate. This benefits mobile developers and publishers who will get better advertising solutions, marketers who will find new ways to reach consumers, and users who will get better ads and more free content."
Over at AdMob, CEO Omar Hamoui said that he was "extremely pleased with today’s decision from the Federal Trade Commission to clear Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Over the past six months we've received a great deal of support from across the mobile industry—and we deeply appreciate it. Our focus is now on working with the team at Google to quickly close the deal."
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Pac-Man is 30! Celebrate along with... Google?
Visiting Google's homepage today will get you a fun surprise: a full, playable version of Pac-Man above the search bar. The logo is the center of the maze and the game recreates the sights and sounds of the game while leaving the smell of cheap pot and regret behind. How I miss arcades.
You can read the gritty details on the official Google blog, but you'll be forgiven for simply playing. Authenticity was important. "Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980’s masterpiece," Marcin Wichary, senior UX designer and developer wrote. If you put in another virtual coin, Ms. Pac-Man joins the fun for co-op play. Use the arrow keys for Pac-Man, WASD for his wife, and you're having a good time.
The game will be available for 48 hours, and will help to celebrate the partially-eaten pizza's 30th birthday. Combine this with another famous birthday, and you have the recipe for a very enjoyable Friday.
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Mac lags Windows in gaming performance, excels at stability
The Steam for Mac client has been in the hands of gamers for a week now and Valve is collecting some useful data about Mac users. Among the statistics the company has gathered so far: two-thirds of Steam for Mac users run on laptops, and after one week, 11 percent of all Steam purchases are for Mac. One surprising result, however, is that the same version of Portal is five times more stable on Mac OS X than on Windows.
Mac OS X has never been the preferred platform for gamers, despite its support for the OpenGL 3D graphics framework. Part of the issue is that graphics hardware drivers for Mac OS X just aren't as well optimized as they are on Windows. In an OpenGL benchmark comparison between Mac OS X 10.6.3 and Windows 7 x64 by Phoronix running on identical Apple hardware—in this case, a 9400M-equipped Mac mini—Windows 7 trounced Mac OS X in terms of raw speed.
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Super Mario Galaxy 2 review: Nintendo perfects platforming
My first thought after playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the first few hours was that Nintendo was kind of being a jerk about the whole thing. It's much harder to nail a satisfying game mechanic—whether it's in 2D or 3D—than people understand. Nintendo constantly shows you something amazing and masterfully produced, and just when you've gotten over being amazed at how well it plays, the game throws it away and offers up something else, equally good.
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New Microsoft betas push "private cloud" strategy
Microsoft Thursday released the beta of BizTalk Server 2010 and the release candidate of Windows Server AppFabric, two products that help developers produce scalable applications and services. These products form key elements of Redmond's plans to enable cloud-like scale-out capabilities to privately hosted and deployed systems.
BizTalk Server 2010 is the latest release of Microsoft's enterprise service bus product, used for integrating and connecting disparate enterprise applications. It makes it easier for applications to access each other's data, even when using different formats and data stores.
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Birds turn their beaks up at organic food
Is organic food everything its advocates claim to be? A new study published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture describes an experiment in which the subjects were free from human biases. The authors found that wild birds preferred 'normal' bird food to the organic option.
To study this burning issue, the researchers set up pairs of identical bird feeders in over 30 locations around northern England. The feeders contained two types of the same variety of wheat seeds, one organic and one conventional. The researchers then monitored the rate at which each seed was eaten over the course of a few weeks.
It was found that the birds preferentially ate the conventional seeds. To make sure that there wasn't something about the relative placement of the feeders, the researchers switched each pair, and found that the birds learned the new location of the conventional seeds and continued to prefer eating from that feeder.
The experiment was repeated over a subsequent winter with a different type of seed, but produced the same results. More controlled laboratory trials with canaries found similar preferences for conventional over organic. In an attempt to explain this disparity, the researchers analyzed the seeds and found that the conventional seed contained upwards of 10 percent more protein per seed, most likely due to the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers used in conventional farming techniques.
Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 2010. DOI: 10.1002/jsfa.4025 (About DOIs).
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Empire Strikes 30: Ars looks back at an amazing film
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back is one of the best science fiction films ever made. It's also 30 years old today, so we give you official permission to feel old. While every movie in the original trilogy is endlessly quoted and referenced in pop culture, Empire Strikes Back is the film that comes the closest to being a great movie.
The film is jet black in tone. Luke lost the only person he knew that connected him to his father, and to the legacy of the Jedi Knights, when Obi-Wan was struck down by Vader in A New Hope (or as older Ars staffers still refer to it, Star Wars). Han Solo is biding his time with the rebels before leaving to return to his life of being a professional smuggler and scoundrel; the bounty on his head is becoming too much to bear. The rebels may have destroyed the Death Star, but they're still undersupplied and on the run, holed up on a frozen hell of a planet. Darth Vader is scouring space to find them, and he seems oddly preoccupied with a young pilot named Luke Skywalker. It only goes downhill from there.
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New UK govt to curb CCTV, scrap ID cards, help open source
The Britain of today is watched constantly by CCTV cameras, is preparing for a national ID card, slaps a "crown copyright" on most government data, and can now censor websites and eventually boot people off the Internet.
According to the new Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition government, that's all about to change. The coalition today released its unified policy statement (PDF), and for techies and privacy advocates, there's lots to like.
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Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers
The privacy issues that have been hounding Facebook may be coming to a head. A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the Facebook, along with MySpace, Digg, and a handful of other social-networking sites, have been sharing users' personal data with advertisers without users' knowledge or consent.
The data shared includes names, user IDs, and other information sufficient to enable ad companies such as the Google-owned DoubleClick to identify distinct user profiles. Some of the sites in question, including MySpace and Facebook, stopped sharing the data after the Journal asked them about it. The surreptitious data sharing was first noticed (PDF) by researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs in August 2009, who brought it up with the sites in question. It wasn't until WSJ contacted them that changes were made.
Not surprisingly, Facebook appears to have gone farther than the other sites when it comes to sharing data. When Facebook's users clicked on ads appearing on a profile page, the site would at times provide data such as the username behind the click, as well as the user whose profile page from which the click came. "If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are," Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman told the Journal. Advertisers contacted by the paper said that they were unaware of the additional data and did not make use of it.
Facebook has tweaked its privacy policy throughout its history, with the most recent moves to open up more user information to the public drawing heavy criticism and FTC complaints. Users have also had a tough time navigating the site's often-Byzantine privacy controls, which has led to a trickle of user defections. With these latest revelations about Facebook ignoring industry standards, not to mention its own privacy policies, that trickle may turn into a torrent.
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Publishers copying, supporting EA fee for online used gameplay
Apart from used game sellers, no one in the industry likes used games. Titles can be sold, traded in, and resold time and again. That cycle makes used-game retailers such as GameStop money, but publishers are left out in the cold. The one-time use code for online games announced by EA is one strategy for trying to cash in on used games sales, and other companies are joining in.
If you buy a copy of UFC Undisputed by THQ, you'll get a code to play online. Those who buy the game used will have to pay $5 to play online. The company detailed the online mode to Destructoid, talking up a feature that allowed players to train and fight with their virtual fighters online. "This multiplayer content for UFC Undisputed 2010 will be available via a one-time code included with the game at purchase. Codes for accessing the content will be available for second-time buyers for an additional $5." While EA allows a free seven-day period to play a used or rented game online to try the features, THQ did not describe a similar system.
Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez is also keen on the idea. "We are looking very carefully at what is being done by EA regarding what we call the '$10 solution,' and we will probably follow that line at sometime in the future," he said in an earnings call, as reported by Gamasutra.
This is just the beginning; if gamers prove tolerant of these codes, other publishers will rush to jump on the bandwagon. GameStop needs used games to maintain its profit margins. Use codes devalue used games by $5-10 per title, which may put a crimp on the retailer's earnings if it is forced to drop prices in response. We'll be watching to see who else begins this practice.
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US happy with 4Mbps baseline; Europe demands 30Mbps for all
The grand master plan for European broadband is out, and one target leaves the United States in the digital dust—a goal of 30 Mbps "or above" for all Europeans by 2020. So says the European Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe, which also wants 50 percent of EU households subscribed to links of 100Mbps or more by that year.
"Today only 1 percent of Europeans have a fast fibre-based internet connection, compared to 12 percent of Japanese and 15 percent of South Koreans," the document laments. "Europe needs widely available and competitively priced fast and ultra fast internet access."
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Google offers Web designers hosted, open-source Web fonts
Web typography just got a shot in the arm from Google, as the company has announced a free, open-source library of 18 typefaces that Web designers will now have at their disposal. Google hosts all the fonts on its servers, and offers a simple Web-based API that handles all the browser differences behind the scenes. Furthermore, Web font service provider TypeKit has partnered with Google to offer an additional open-source JavaScript library called WebFont Loader for even more control over how fonts are loaded by the browser.
The state of the art in Web typography just a few years ago consisted of relying on a short list of "Web fonts" common to nearly every platform. Anything fancier required replacing text with images, which looked great but hampered usability, especially for those with disabilities. More advanced techniques came along, but they involved replacing the text with Flash or SVG graphics instead of static images.
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Is the iPad helping or hurting the Mac? No one is quite sure
Apple is supposedly selling an astounding 200,000 iPads per week in the US, a number that is leaving current weekly Mac sales in the dust. This bold claim was made by analyst Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets in a note sent to investors Thursday (seen by Apple Insider). The estimate puts the iPad in front of Apple’s Mac line, estimated to be selling 110,000 units per week in the US, but behind the iPhone 3GS which, during the first quarter of 2010, was selling about 246,000 units per week.
Abramsky also claims that over 25 percent of all brick-and-mortar Apple Stores in the US are currently “allocating to waiting lists" for the iPad. What little stock stores do have seems to be WiFi-only units. It is currently unclear whether the iPad shortage is due to extreme demand or if Apple is stockpiling units for its May 28 international launch. The same analyst believes that Apple currently has already presold 600,000 units in countries that will see a summer iPad launch.
Abramsky believes that the iPad will cannibalize 25 percent of Apple's other products, although it is unclear whether that cannibalization will be from just Macs, or iPhone and iPods as well. Regardless, he claims that Apple will see increased revenue because of the new device. Like Steve said, it's better for Apple to cannibalize itself than let someone else do the job first.
News of cannibalization could be premature however, at least according to findings presented by the online advertising firm Chitka. The company saw an almost 3 percentage point rise in Mac OS Web traffic last month. There could be a number of different explanations for this increase, but Chitka indicates that it may be due to the "iPad effect." That is, users being inspired by their iPads to go out and buy a Mac.
Although it's too early to tell whether that's the case, one thing we can be certain of is that the iPad is popular.
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Sex, lies, and antelopes
The four-year study looked at the behavior of topi antelopes (Damaliscus lunatus) in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. This area is dominated by a huge number of predators, including lions, cheetahs, leopards, and hyenas, all of which prey regularly on antelopes. When topi detect a predator nearby, they often make snort-like alarm calls.
From February to March, male topi hold small territories through which receptive females pass to assess each male’s mating potential. The authors noticed that, while a female in estrus was on a male’s territory, the male would sometimes emit alarm calls, even in the complete absence of a predator. These false alarms are acoustically indistinguishable from true alarm snorts.
The authors set out to determine whether these false alarm snorts are simply predator detection errors, or if they function to deter the female from leaving the territory in order to secure more mating opportunities with her. The results overwhelmingly supported the authors' "sexual deception hypothesis." False alarms almost never occurred without a receptive female on the territory, the onset of the false snorts was highly correlated with a female’s attempts to leave the territory, and, after emitting a false snort, males managed an average of 2.8 extra booty calls.
So why do females keep responding to the deceptive males' tricks? For one, they’re only subjected to false calls once a year during their one-day estrus period. Perhaps more importantly, while the cost of falling for a false alarm is relatively low, the cost of ignoring a true alarm snort and wandering into the jaws of danger is high enough that it just doesn’t make sense for the females to risk it.
The American Naturalist, 2010. DOI: 10.1086/653078 (About DOIs).
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Smart grid privacy rules may be blown opportunity for science
Over the past several years, social scientists have had a field day studying the vast libraries of digital records that are produced as a happy byproduct of society's increased use of electronic systems. Anonymized cell phone records have given us new perspectives on human mobility. Logs from virtual worlds like Everquest and World of Warcraft have powered studies in fields from behavioral psychology to epidemiology. Today's issue of Science contains a stark warning that researchers could miss out on what may eventually be an even greater opportunity for access to this sort of data: the smart grid.
Combined, the US and Europe plan to install nearly 300 million smart grid devices within the next decade. Depending on the precise device used, these will monitor electricity use in homes and offices at time spans of considerably less than an hour and in some cases as short as every minute. The smartest of these devices can include data about specific appliances in use; by tracking things like current, phase, and frequency. Even the dumber ones can provide information about what's going on when it comes to power use.
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Google Storage for Developers takes on Amazon S3
Google has launched a new cloud storage service competing directly with Amazon's S3. Google Storage for Developers offers scalable, high-bandwidth storage, with an easy-to-use RESTful API.
Google Storage will cost 17¢ per gigabyte per month, with uploads costing 10¢ per gigabyte and 15-30¢ per gigabyte for downloads. Initially, Google Storage will only be available to a limited number of US-based developers, with 100GB of storage and 300GB of bandwidth per month for no charge.
This announcement comes just a day after Amazon offered a cut-price version of S3, offering weaker reliability guarantees for a lower price. Amazon's Reduced Reliability storage offers 99.99 percent reliability for 10¢ per gigabyte, compared to S3's normal price of 15¢ per gigabyte. Amazon's pricing structure also offers discounts for heavy users.
Though Google has its AppEngine cloud computing platform, it has previously lacked a storage solution to go with it. As such, it was missing a key component for many Web applications, and represented a big drawback relative to Amazon's more comprehensive offerings. Google Storage is a step towards remedying this deficit, but it's going to be a while before the search giant's offerings will rival the maturity of the much more established—and cheaper—S3.
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Google snatched up popular iPhone app for Android streaming
Google today announced that it acquired mobile streaming service SimplifyMedia two months ago, and will be leveraging its technology to let Android users to stream music directly from their home PCs.
Simplify Media had previously made a very popular iPhone app with the same streaming capabilities, but announced in March that it was discontinuing its iPhone app and moving the company in a "new direction." It turns out that direction was being bought by Google. During a keynote presentation today, Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra revealed the company's plans to build Simplify Media's technology into Android.
SimplifyMedia's server application runs on both Windows and Mac computers, and can stream music from apps like iTunes, WinAmp, and Windows Media Player. It can also stream photos from apps like iPhoto. Music and photos can then be streamed from a home computer to a remote one, or to an iPhone or iPod touch using the Simplify Media iPhone app.
According to Gundotra's comments, Google will focus on enabling music streaming from home PCs to Android-based mobile devices. This is in contrast to services like Pandora, Spotify, or the soon-to-be defunct Lala, which streams music to mobile devices from the cloud.
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Speedy Android 2.2 hits with tethering, push framework, more
At the Google I/O developer conference today in San Francisco, the search giant unveiled Android 2.2, codenamed Froyo. The new version introduces some impressive performance improvements and much-needed feature enhancements.
Vic Gundotra, Google VP of engineering, discussed Android's progress and introduced the new version of the platform during a keynote presentation on the second day of the event. In the past 18 months, Android has attracted 21 hardware makers and 60 carriers in 40 countries. There are now over 60 compatible Android devices, which are rapidly increasing in popularity. Google says that over 100,000 new Android devices are activated every day.
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Android-based Google TV coming to living rooms this fall
Google has finally announced its long-rumored TV efforts at Google I/O. Senior product manager Rishi Chandra said during the Thursday keynote that "video should be consumed on the biggest, best, and brightest screen in your house, and that's the TV," and that it hoped to combine the Web and TV-viewing experience in ways that others have yet to do.
Up front, Google TV will come either in the form of a set-top box or will be built into certain TVs (launch partners include Intel, Sony, and Logitech). The OS is based on Android and the built-in browser is a version of Google Chrome with the Flash 10.1 plugin. Google plans to open the source code for Google TV and add its own set of APIs so that it can be further extended by developers. The hardware will all be Atom-based, and it should start appearing on store shelves in the fall of 2010.
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