James Temple reports:
AdMob Inc. isn’t well known among consumers, but privacy groups, the Federal Trade Commission and mobile businesses all know its name.
The 160-person San Mateo company is at the center of what could be the next big online opportunity, as well as a raging debate over privacy in the digital age and an escalating war between Google and Apple.
[…]
It’s these highly personalized capabilities that raise the hackles of privacy advocates, however. They raise a host of questions about “how the data is used and manipulated without the consumer understanding,” said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog. Those concerns are only heightened by the proposed acquisition by Google, which he said could bore deeper into personal information by coupling its rich user databases with AdMob’s.
Read more in the San Francisco Chronicle.