Google, the undisputed global titan of all things mobile advertising, upset some of its most loyal developers yesterday when the company announced plans to retire AdWhirl.
AdWhirl, which allows devs to easily transition between different ad networks, is controlled by AdMob, the Google-owned ad network and the largest mobile advertising network in the world today.
Google famously purchased AdMob for $750 million in late 2009.
“As we continue to improve AdMob Mediation, we’ve decided to retire AdWhirl, and will be discontinuing the service on 30 September 2013,” Google informed developers in writing this week.
“The open source code for AdWhirl will still be available if anyone wants to run their own AdWhirl service,” Google adds, suggesting to devs that now would be a great time to begin hauling their apps over to AdMob Mediation, which Google says is “no cost and more robust, with features like network-level reporting, country-level allocation and support for more ad formats… We encourage you to start using AdMob Mediation prior to 30 September. You’ll need an AdMob account to begin using AdMob Mediation.”
Several developers, however, have already publicly voiced their objection to the decision, but mostly on the basis of how fast Google plans to shutter AdWhirl. Only three months to complete the migration is too soon, they argue, when much of their revenue depends on the current arrangement.
