Tag Archives: Google

How YouTube Turned Into a Real Business By Making Ads Optional

by

From my story in MIT Technology Review:

In 2008, when Shishir Mehrotra joined YouTube to take charge of advertising, the booming video-sharing service was getting hundreds of millions of views a day. ­YouTube, which had been acquired by Google in 2006, was also spending as much as $700 million on Internet bandwidth, content licensing, and other costs. With revenue of only $200 million, YouTube was widely viewed as Google’s folly.

Mehrotra, an MIT math and computer science alum who had never worked in advertising, thought he had a solution: skippable ads that advertisers would pay for only when people watched them. That would be a radical change from the conventional media model of paying for ad “impressions” regardless of whether the ads are actually viewed, and even from Google’s own pay-per-click model. He reckoned his plan would provide an incentive to create better advertising and increase the value for advertisers of those ads people chose to watch. But the risk was huge: people might not watch the ads at all.

Mehrotra’s gamble paid off. YouTube will gross $3.6 billion this year, estimates Citi analyst Mark Mahaney. The $2.4 billion that YouTube will keep after sharing ad revenue with video content partners is nearly six times the revenue the streaming video service Hulu raked in last year from ads and subscriptions. And that suggests Mehrotra has helped Google solve a problem many fast-growing Web companies continue to struggle with: how to make money off the huge audience that uses its service free.

In 2008, Mehrotra was working for Microsoft and hankered to have his own startup, but he agreed to talk to a Google executive he knew about working there instead. He decided against it—but that evening he kept thinking about how the exec was frustrated that most ad dollars go to TV, even though nobody watches TV ads. Yet at his Super Bowl party two weeks earlier, Mehrotra recalled, guests kept asking him to replay the ads. Was there a way, he wondered, to make TV ads as captivating as Super Bowl ads, every day?

The answer came to him in a flash. …

Read the complete story in MIT Technology Review.

Stung By Click Fraud Allegations, Facebook Reveals How It’s Fighting Back

by

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

It’s a question that has haunted online advertisers since soon after Google perfected pay-per-click search ads a decade ago: Are those clicks from real potential customers, or are they from scammers draining my ad budget?

Now the issue of “click fraud” has hit Facebook full-force. On July 30, Limited Run, which provides software to enable bands and music labels sell physical products like records, said it was closing its Facebook account after finding that some 80% of the clicks it got during a recent ad campaign on Facebook were likely generated not by real people but by bots. Those are coordinated groups of computers hijacked by scammers or spammers, so any clicks they generate cost advertisers money for no benefit. (In a separate issue, in fact the main reason Limited Run said it’s leaving Facebook, the company also said Facebook asked it to spend $2,000 on ads in order to change its Facebook page name, something Facebook has said is not its policy.)

Limited Run said it came to the conclusion that the clicks were fraudulent after running its own analysis. It  determined that most of the clicks for which Facebook was charging it came from computers that weren’t loading Javascript, a programming language that allows Web pages to be interactive. Almost all Web browsers load Javascript by default, so the assumption is that if a click comes from one that isn’t, it’s probably not a real person but a bot.

To be clear, Limited Run isn’t charging that Facebook itself is responsible for those apparently fraudulent clicks. Often the culprits in click fraud are small-time ad networks and other outfits that pay people to click on Google and other ads they run on their sites, though that’s unlikely to be an issue for Facebook, which does not yet run its ads outside its own site as Google and others do. Perhaps, Limited Run has suggested, rivals could be using the bots to cost the company money by forcing it to pay for useless clicks.

The click fraud issue has at times loomed large for Google and other companies because of the potential impact on advertiser trust, and Google continues to fight click fraud–as does Facebook. Indeed, the issue isn’t new for Facebook either, with complaints, including lawsuits, bubbling up since at least 2009.

But while click fraud doesn’t seem to have driven away a large number of Google advertisers, whether because the company has minimized it or because advertisers simply factor it in as a cost of doing business online, the issue is a particular concern for Facebook now. It’s trying to prove to skeptical advertisers and investors that its ads work, and claims that there’s rampant click fraud don’t help. At the same time, Facebook has said recently that some 1.5% of its nearly 1 billion accounts are “undesirable,” meaning “user profiles that we determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming.

Facebook has declined to say much about the Limited Run situation, though the company says it believes it catches and filters out the vast majority of “invalid clicks” before they’re even charged to advertisers. Its own page on “click and impression quality” doesn’t reveal much detail about how it deals with click fraud, however, so I asked the company for more insight on what it’s doing about the problem.

Mark Rabkin, an engineering director on Facebook’s ads team, responded to questions by email. While at times he’s repeating what Facebook has said before, he also reveals that the company has a growing staff of 300 people working on security and safety and explains in more detail the various ways the company tries to catch bad clicks. Here are his answers. …

Read the complete interview at The New Persuaders.

Why Google May Be Secretly Happy That Apple’s Dropping Its YouTube App From Next iPhone

by

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

OK, so Apple will drop its YouTube app from iOS 6, the new version of its iPhone operating system due out this fall. Cue loud and histrionic coverage about Apple’s thermonuclear war, as the late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs put it, vs. Google and its Android mobile software.

Except it seems likely that script is off the mark. Here’s why: Most people may not realize it, but that YouTube app on their iPhones is actually designed by Apple, a holdover from the iPhone’s introduction in 2007, when all the apps were Apple’s and YouTube was a big draw. (So big that one of Apple’s original iPhone ads highlighted YouTube, as in the video above.) Problem is, since then, Apple has appeared to do relatively little to advance the app, which now looks old (almost as old as that TV used in the app’s icon, at least on my impossibly old iPhone).

Even more important from the point of view of Google and the pro content producers on YouTube, the Apple YouTube app doesn’t allow ads to be run against all those billions of videos views a month that YouTube draws on mobile devices. So search for “Lady Gaga” on your iPhone and what do you see? Well, Lady Gaga, but very little from official channels such as ladygagaofficial, which means very few official videos. Contrast that to a search on “Lady Gaga” on YouTube.com, and official videos are there, along with ads all over the place.

Why the huge difference? Because she can’t run ads on the iPhone YouTube app, and no ads means no money generated. Multiply that by thousands of artists, movies, and all kinds of content that advertisers want to run ads against–ads that will bring in up to $3.6 billion in revenues this year, by Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney’s recent estimate for YouTube. Now you realize why Google may not mind much that the creaky old adless Apple app is heading for the trash can icon.

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.

Why Google’s Nexus 7 Tablet Is Hotter Than Apple’s iPad

by

Cross-posted with some changes from my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

For once, an Apple product isn’t the hottest piece of hardware on the scene. This week, at least, that highly enviable status goes to Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet.  According to reports, several retailers are sold out of the 7-inch tablet, and even Google’s own online store only has the cheaper, $199 8-GB version. The $249 16-GB version is no longer available anywhere except on eBay for a steep premium.

Of course, you have to remember that selling out doesn’t mean much without knowing how many sold out. This is a classic Apple ploy, though to give Apple credit, it usually turns out later that it sold a ton of whatever sold out. No matter, selling out a product shortly after its release still works great as a marketing tool, as you can see from the coverage gushing about “incredible demand.”

But Google deserves credit for more than just marketing. Now that I’ve tried it for several weeks, with a model provided temporarily by Google at its I/O developer conference, I can tell you why the Nexus 7 is the latest hot gadget:

* It looks and feels, to use the technical term, slick. The fact is, Apple’s products have a look and feel that few can match, and even the Nexus 7 doesn’t quite get there. But it’s pretty damn close. It feels substantial, while substantially lighter, of course, than the iPad. The swiping is very smooth as well.

* The 7-inch size is appealing and convenient. It’s easy to hold it in one hand, while swiping with the other. It also fits in a pants or shorts pocket (or purse, I’m guessing) surprisingly well for temporary transport. So I end up taking it more places than my larger tablet.

* The screen is no Retina like the latest iPad, but it still looks sharp and bright.

* It may not have all the apps, or some of the latest and greatest, that Apple has, but it’s got plenty. And some very nice ones, too, such as Flipboard and my current favorite, The Night Sky.

* Almost forgot–it’s cheap! For $199, it’s less than half the current $399 minimum for an iPad. That makes the Nexus 7 close to an impulse item, or at least a gift that won’t break the bank.

* Uber-reviewers Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, David Pogue of the New York Times, and even Apple fanboy/Google hater MG Siegler, himself, all like it. So does almost everyone else.

For all that, I can’t help mentioning the downsides. The default screens are a mess of apps, My Library (which features an Esquire cover of Bruce Willis that I really don’t want to see anymore), and recommended apps and magazines I couldn’t care less about (Country Weekly magazine? Really?). You can change the app organization, but at the outset, it’s haphazard, making it hard to find some basic ones at first. In particular, the nondescript icon for Google Play, which seems really key to Google’s ultimate success at mobile devices and apps, doesn’t suggest an app store. And who besides us Google watchers know that “Google Play” is an app store anyway?

As many have noted, there’s not much content in its Google Play store. But that means little to me because I’m a Netflix subscriber and can watch using the Android App. There’s also a Hulu Plus app. (But not Amazon Instant Videos via my Prime subscription, at least not without browser tweaks few will want to bother with; that may be a deal-killer for big Amazon video fans.) The device doesn’t have a rear-facing camera. Since I’m not using a tablet to take photos (partly because, in what is a weird omission, there is no built-in camera app), and since Skype is one of the killer apps as far as I’m concerned, the single front-facing one works fine for me. It’s WiFi only, though again, I wouldn’t pay for another monthly data plan anyway. And with only 8 or 16 GB of storage, you better be comfortable storing most of your stuff in the cloud (I am).

Finally, there’s apparently a problem with the touchscreen, though I haven’t run across it yet, that’s especially a problem for playing games. My own minor complaint about the screen, which I haven’t seen mentioned in reviews I’ve read, is that it’s just a tad too small, or at least the border around the screen is. It’s hard to pick up along the side, because too often I end up touching an icon and launching an app or stopping a video when I don’t want to. The recessed side buttons are a little hard to reach sometimes, too. These are quibbles, though.

Meanwhile, it looks like Apple is readying its own smaller iPad for under $300. That could well steal the Nexus 7’s thunder–especially since it almost certainly will do two or three things better than the Nexus 7 because it’s Apple and because it will be newer.

But for the next few months, at least, Google has a bona fide hit on its hands. And for all the right reasons, not just manufactured scarcity.

Read the original post at The New Persuaders.

For Once, Google Tops Apple: Today’s Death-Defying Demo

by

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

Apple is legendary for its demos at its software developer conferences, introducing products that surprise and delight the crowd and then consumers. Even with the passing of cofounder and master showman Steve Jobs last year, Apple will likely continue to set the gold standard in launching products in the most public and desire-inducing way.

Google? It’s known more for rather geeky demos, and even one or two that didn’t work very well, like the demo of Google TV two years ago.

Today, however, it outdid itself–and even more amazing, outdid Apple. Reminiscent of Jobs’ famous “one more thing” announcements, Google cofounder Sergey Brin bounded onto the stage at the Google I/O conference keynote to “interrupt” VP Vic Gundotra with a demo of Google Glass, those wearable computer glasses he has been seen wearing in the last few months.

But this wasn’t just any demo. Google had a few people in an airship wearing the glasses, and when they looked down on San Francisco, it was pretty cool in a vertiginous sort of way.

Then it became apparent that these guys (and a woman) weren’t going to stay in the airship for long. They were going to jump. Over a heavily populated city. Onto the roof of the very conference center where Brin and 5,000 engineers were gathered. …

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.

Google Makes Renewed Grab for the Rest of Online Advertising

by

New DoubleClick ad system heats up battle to create an operating system for digital marketing

Cross-posted from my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Hundreds of well-funded online ad technology companies have sprouted up in recent years, each aiming to make it easier and more efficient for marketers to reach just the target audience they want.

Terence Kawaja, CEO of boutique investment bank Luma Partners, created this now-famous Display Lumascape to show how complex the online ad tech industry has become.

Yet the result is a crazy quilt of companies–graphically illustrated in that mess of a chart on the right–that drives marketers and agencies crazy. The very existence of so many competing products, in fact, has made placing ads online and measuring their impact more complicated and cumbersome than ever. “Venture capital has supported and financed a bunch of chaos,” advertising veteran Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the trade group Interactive Advertising Bureau, griped at a recent ad conference.

The result: Most ad dollars, nearly $200 billion a year, still get spent on television because it’s so much easier.

That’s the problem Google aims to solve with a revamped ad buying system it will announce today at a private Future of Advertising event hosted by its DoubleClick display-ad management and technology unit. (Part of the event will be livestreamed here.) The company, which already dominates 60% of the online ad business–those little text ads that appear on the right and top of the page when you do a search–now has its sights set on the remaining 40% of the industry. That would be the $25 billion worldwide market for display ads, the graphical and video banners familiar on virtually every commercial website.

Google’s goal: Provide the leading one-stop shop for advertisers and publishers to buy ads on websites, mobile phones, social networks, apps, and whatever other new media the Internet spawns. Essentially, it’s building an operating system for ads much like Microsoft did with its Windows for PCs–with much the same appeal to marketers and agencies as Windows has for PC users. “When you’re putting together a campaign, you want everything connected vs. trying to piece it all together,” says Kurt Unkel, president of the online ad buying operation at Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi digital ad agency, a Google partner.

Google’s announcement is the latest salvo in a war to control the next era of digital marketing. After a decade in which Google’s search ads overtook display ads with an unmatched ability to turn clicks directly into sales, many advertisers and publishers expect–or at least hope for–a resurgence of new kinds of display ads that could woo brand advertising dollars from TV. Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president of display advertising products, has predicted that display will be a $200 billion industry in a few years.

Read the rest of the story at The New Persuaders.

We Have Met the Evil and It Is Not Google or Apple: It Is Us

by

3

Cross-posted on my Forbes blog, The New Persuaders.

So much talk about evil these days. Google is evil for promoting results from its Google+ social network on search results pages, and even for changing its privacy policy to make clear its services share data. Apple is evil for not coming down hard enough on harsh working conditions at its Chinese suppliers’ factories.

Well, maybe. But if they’re going to be honest, the many pundits piling on to today’s titans of tech need to look up from the screen and into the mirror. Google’s and even Apple’s businesses, warts and all, don’t exist without our explicit participation. As Pogo famously said, albeit in a different context: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Now, I’m still not so sure Google’s actions on either score rise to the level of evil by any reasonable meaning of the term. (In fact, the furor over Search plus Your World  makes me think of Pogo creator Walt Kelly’s second most famous line: “Don’t take life so serious, son. It ain’t nohow permanent.”) But it sure looks like Google’s at least edging closer to the evil line than its hifalutin ideals ever seemed to suggest.

For its part, Apple has taken considerable effort improve the factories that produce the gleaming iPhones and iPads we love. But if today’s New York Times story is correct, it’s clearly culpable in its seeming ambivalence about coming down hard on its suppliers exploiting workers.

Fact is, though, these companies get away with things we don’t like only because we let them. As powerful as Apple and Google seem, they both answer to customers and users. That would be us. And unlike politicians, they must answer to us every day–if we insist they do.

But we can’t do that just by bitching about them on blogs. You want Google to back off on personalized search and data-sharing? Opt for the plain results (click the Hide Personal Search button up there on the right), sign out of your Google account, or even delete it entirely. Or try Bing, or DuckDuckGo. Easier than blogging about it! And if enough of you do it, rest assured that Google’s data crunchers will notice, and if they’re as smart as they like to think, they’ll figure out how to change things.

You want Apple to fix its factory conditions? Don’t buy that next iPhone or iPad, and tell Apple why. If enough of you just say no, Apple will notice, and maybe start to use some of those unbelievable profits to change things.

Everything else is just talk. And there’s been quite enough of that already.

Beyond the Wow Factor: Why LinkedIn’s IPO Matters

by

It would be easy to take today’s blockbuster initial public offering by business networking service LinkedIn as a sign that the IPO, the fuel for the tech industry’s wealth-creation engine, is back. But one IPO on the first day won’t tell us that. It’s just as easy to dismiss the rocket-ride to well over double its already-raised offering price as a sign of another bubble. Again, one great IPO’s first day doesn’t mean everybody will party like it’s 1999 (though if it’s “brain-dead” to suspect there’s more than a little froth in Internet investing, take me off life support now).

Still, there are many other lessons we should take away from LinkedIn’s IPO. Here are a few:

* Social networking has arrived as more than a cute phenomenon. LinkedIn may not be Facebook or even Twitter, but it’s serious networking, using people’s social connections to create real value. A lot of people already know this, but for the rest, it’s well past time to stop listening to the Luddites who think Facebook and Twitter are nothing but places to tell people what you ate for lunch.

* At the same time, it’s also apparent that social networking won’t be a winner-take-all business. Yes, a lot of businesses and even professionals use Facebook for business purposes, and will continue to do so. But many more people recognize the value in having separate circles of friends, colleagues, business contacts, and the like. Now, I’d bet that Facebook could be the biggest winner–winner-take-most, if you will. But Mark Zuckerberg clearly won’t own everything social.

* This is the first real sign of whether individual-investor interest in IPOs has returned. It was already apparent that the (literally) marquee names like Facebook, or even Zynga or Groupon, would rock the world when they go public. They’ve got fame, huge and fast-growing revenues, and soaring private valuations already, so using them as a proxy for whether smaller fry would go public was always erroneous. LinkedIn, by contrast, is a much smaller business that’s closer to those of dozens of private Internet companies that to date have been unable to provide their venture investors and entrepreneurial teams exits besides getting acquired. You can be sure that those private Internet companies are using LinkedIn to research potential chief financial officers and arranging meetings with Wall Street investment bankers, if they weren’t already.

* Those shady private-market valuations, which have given Facebook, for one, $65 billion-and-up valuations, suddenly don’t look so crazy after all following the first IPO of an actively traded private company on private exchanges such as Second Market and SharesPost. LinkedIn’s $2.4 billion valuation on those marketplaces, in fact, indicates to some that the supposedly savvy investors trading shares privately vastly underestimated the value of these companies. No doubt LinkedIn’s market cap will be volatile, so it’s unwise to think that Facebook suddenly will be worth multiples of its already breathtaking valuation. But it’s clear that the limited number of shares being traded on these exchanges, as well as the limited amount of information these investors had, didn’t necessarily cause them to overpay. At the same time, it’s unlikely the SEC will back off from scrutinizing whether to regulate them–in fact, it may move even more quickly if this IPO sparks renewed interest in the exchanges.

* LinkedIn’s success proves that Web companies aren’t entirely dependent on advertising for revenues, providing hope that other business models such as subscriptions and paid services are credible alternatives. LinkedIn makes most of its revenues not from advertising but from paid services for recruiters and premium subscriptions.

* Nice guys don’t always finish last. Talk to almost any entrepreneur about LinkedIn cofounder and executive chairman Reid Hoffman, and you’ll get nothing but admiration, and not just because he’s an angel investor in many dozens of their startups as well as a partner in the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. Hoffman seems generous with his time–not least, full disclosure, with me as a reporter since LinkedIn’s earliest days. I remember asking him once, years ago, about the libertarian, government-bashing leanings of some of his more famous colleagues from PayPal, and he sighed and recalled how, as the liberal in the bunch, he kept pushing them to give back to people less fortunate than they. Regardless of your politics, though, isn’t it nice to see that you can become a billionaire without being a jerk?

* For individual investors, the rule for Internet company stocks still should be caveat emptor. That $8 billion $9 billion valuation likely won’t stay that high in coming weeks or months, not consistently anyway, as the pent-up enthusiasm for Internet IPOs gets spent (at least until Groupon or Zynga or Facebook cranks it up again). For all the success of LinkedIn as a company and as a bellwether for Internet stock issues, it’s still a speculative play, and its share movement may well drive home yet another lesson: Individual investors should never put money they can’t afford to lose into anything their dentist is investing in, their cabbie mentions, or the press is hyperventilating about.

A Glimpse Into the Future of Television

by

1

If there’s one thing that struck me while I was researching an article on the future of television for Technology Review, it was all the fake living rooms. Google has one. So does Roku. So do Logitech, Sezmi, and Intel (which I believe has several in different states). I’m sure I missed a dozen more. It’s a sign of how important television, the star of living rooms real and faux, is to tech companies as they look to tap into the technology and media riches of the last great mass medium.

They’re all trying to figure out how to meld the medium they know–the Internet–with the one they hope to revolutionize: television. Yet with little native knowledge of television, Silicon Valley firms must troop consumer after consumer into these cozy little corners of their corporations and observe how people watch television and how they respond to their many efforts to bring the Web to the screen watched on average five hours a day. Even now, these companies are still struggling. Google, for instance, just told several consumer electronics manufacturers to hold off on planned launches of Google TV products at the Consumer Electronics Show in early January.

At the same time, the television industry has a lot to learn, too. Like the music industry, they’re in many cases fighting to keep too many people from watching television entertainment online, because that could damage their lucrative business models. But while they may have more leverage against the Internet hordes than the music industry had, thanks to both those business models and the durability of the TV experience for viewers, they don’t know any more about the Internet than the tech companies know about TV. Ultimately they will need to give viewers more flexible ways to view their content, or someone else will.

At this point, honestly, it’s tough to know how this volatile mix of TV and Net will shake out. I know, because I asked a whole lot of experts in both, and it was kind of amazing how uncertain nearly all of them are about what will happen even a couple of years from now. I hope to have provided some insight into how things could play out, but the uncertainty about what’s coming next in television is what I find most interesting: Whatever comes of this clash of two great mediums is going to surprise us all.

Questions About the Google-AdMob Deal–and How the FTC Answered Them

by

Today the Federal Trade Commission decided not to oppose Google’s proposed purchase of leading mobile ad firm AdMob, clearing the way for the $750 million deal to be closed. Given recent hints that the FTC’s staff might recommend the commission block the deal, the decision was something of a surprise. But as the FTC itself explained, “although the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues,” there is in fact ample competition in what is after all still a nascent market.

The investigation raised several questions about not only the mobile ad market but the FTC’s stance on such deals in the Obama era. Here are some of those questions, and the apparent answers:

* Would the deal allow Google to dominate the mobile ad market?

Not at this time, the FTC said, but noted that that was a danger:

Google’s proposed $750 million acquisition of AdMob necessitated close scrutiny because the transaction appeared likely to lead to a substantial lessening of competition in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act. Those companies generate the most revenue among mobile advertising networks, and both companies are particularly strong in one segment of the market, namely performance ad networks. The Commission’s six-month investigation yielded evidence that each of the merging parties viewed the other as its primary competitor, and that each firm made business decisions in direct response to this perceived competitive threat.

* Are mobile ads a separate market from other online ads?

I’m not sure why mobile ads, which after all are simply ads that happen to appear on mobile device screens, are really a market separate from other online ads. Marketers, after all, usually view them as potential additions or substitutes to display ads or even search ads, and they can in fact be either of those. And if they view them as separate markets now, it’s likely they won’t stay that way as ad technology firms increasingly offer them as a package to marketers. But it’s clear from the FTC press release that FTC considers the mobile ad market distinct–and furthermore that it doesn’t matter how new it is:

The Commission stressed that mergers in fast-growing new markets like mobile advertising should get the same level of antitrust scrutiny as those in other markets. The statement goes on to note that, “Though we have determined not to take action today, the Commission will continue to monitor the mobile marketplace to ensure a competitive environment and to protect the interests of consumers.”

Mobile ad networks, such as those provided by Google and AdMob, sell advertising space for mobile publishers, who create applications and content for websites configured for mobile devices, primarily Apple’s iPhone and devices that run Google’s Android operating system. By “monetizing” mobile publishers’ content through the sale of advertising space, mobile ad networks play a vital role in fueling the rapid expansion of mobile applications and Internet content.

* Did Apple help Google clear the deal?

Um, clearly. According to the commission’s statement:

The agency’s concerns [about the Google-AdMob deal] ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple Computer Inc. – the maker of the iPhone – to launch its own, competing mobile ad network. … As a result of Apple’s entry (into the market), 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.

* Should Apple be afraid of the FTC?

Very afraid. Or at least it should expect intense scrutiny, if the rather detailed description of Apple’s role in this market is any indication:

These concerns, however, were outweighed by recent evidence that Apple is poised to become a strong competitor in the mobile advertising market, the FTC’s statement says. Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless and used it to launch its own iAd service. In addition, Apple can leverage its close relationships with application developers and users, its access to a large amount of proprietary user data, and its ownership of iPhone software development tools and control over the iPhone developers’ license agreement.

* Is Google off the regulatory hook now?

Not by a long shot. As the commission said:

Though we have determined not to take action today, the Commission will continue to monitor the mobile marketplace to ensure a competitive environment and to protect the interests of consumers.

Indeed, few experts believe that this decision will have much if any impact on other regulatory concerns about Google’s strength in search ads, its moves into other areas such as display ads, or the privacy implications of its vast data collection.