Originally Posted By: hybrid8
This just in. Apple to Google: "Suck it."

They haven't outright banned other ad service providers, but they've done something even more clever, good for consumers and good for protecting their IP. They've put in language in the most recent SDK licensing agreement to forbid certain types of data to be collected by third parties without the consent of the end-user/customer and certain other types outright.

The ban isn't because Apple are especially concerned about their customers though. It is purely for the protecting their IP as you mentioned. They're furious at one of the companies that collected usage metrics for some apps which discovered that several people were using something with the ID of iPhone3,1 all around the Apple campus.

It is a bit sketchy anyway that they used to collect that much data and included your GPS location as well.