Apple have had a hell of a profitable year, overtaking the net worth of giant competitors such as Microsoft. It seems that we can't go a day without them making news headlines and we reported yesterday that they have coded an ad removal option into their Safari 5 reader.

It has just broken that U.S. Antitrust regulators plan to investigate whether Apple are unfairly restricting rivals such as Google from displaying ads on the iPhone, iPod and iPad. This is according to news released via the Financial Times.

Regulators are already scanning Apple's actions said the paper, citing people familiar with the move. As yet, no details have emerged as to whether the Department Of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission would be handling the investigation.

Google have been very public about their displeasure with the Apple developer agreement changes, saying that it would cripple Google's advertising tools for the iPhone.

KitGuru says: Apples portable devices have such a huge market that this could hit competitors hard.

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