It's been dragging on since November 2009, but Google's acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob has now been cleared by the US Federal Trade Commission.

"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,"; the Commission's statement explains.

"We are extremely pleased with today's decision from the Federal Trade Commission to clear Google's acquisition of AdMob," said AdMob CEO and founder Omar Hamoui.

"Over the past six months we've received a great deal of support from across the mobile industry - and we deeply appreciate it. Our focus is now on working with the team at Google to quickly close the deal

"Once that happens, we will finally get to the fun part - connecting our teams and products to find ways to better serve our customers. Stay tuned."

[source: FTC, AdMob blog]