There was quite the dust-up after AdMob bought AdWhirl. Critics said it was a conflict of interest for a mobile ad network to own a mobile ad aggregator. In theory, the job of an aggregator is to provide the best ad to the developer or publisher. So, if AdMob owned the aggregator, the question was how could it serve ads without any bias?

AdMob’s answer to that was to make AdWhirl open-source, so that all those involved could see that nothing sneaky was going on behind the curtain. Today, AdMob followed through on that promise (even though it has since been purchased by Google), and officially launched “open source versions of the AdWhirl iPhone SDK and AdWhirl Server.” In a blog post, AdMob wrote: “Our primary goal with this launch is to maintain the ease-of-use to which AdWhirl users have become accustomed, while giving developers increased transparency and flexibility in meeting their mobile ad network mediation needs.”