That honor goes to something that isn’t a conventional ad at all, but a six-minute promotional video that Apple put up last year to introduce the iPhone 4. So says Visible Measures, a Web-tracking company that specializes in viral videos.

This one has generated more than 17.3 million views, via different outlets, since it went up in June 2010, says Visible Measures.

Meanwhile the “1984″ spot has a mere 10.3 million views. But — no offense to the folks who put made the iPhone 4 clip — I’d rather watch this one anytime.

Visible Measures has a full Top 10 list, of course. I’m still a big fan of the “Think Different” campaign, in large part because of its (well-received) hubris.

“2011 looks a lot like 1984,” Motorola says in the ad, which features an image of the Earth surrounded by Apple’s white headphones. “One authority. One design. One way to work. It’s time for more choices.”

The ad then touts some of the Xoom’s features, such as its dual-core chip, HD video playback, front- and rear-facing cameras and its ability to play Flash.

The tablet wars are clearly heating up, with all the players staking out their space. RIM also posted a video on its Web site, touting the business capabilities of its yet-to-be-released PlayBook tablet. The video shows the PlayBook being connected to a BlackBerry and using a Flash-enabled dashboard from SAP’s Business Objects unit. RIM plans to talk more about its developer plans at an event on Thursday in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Google is hosting an event on Wednesday to go deeper into its tablet-oriented Honeycomb version of Android. The Xoom, which debuts next month, is to be the first device running Honeycomb.

Mobilized will be on hand to provide coverage of both the RIM and Google events.

Here is Motorola’s Super Bowl teaser ad:

For those who need a refresher, here was Apple’s Super Bowl spot introducing the Macintosh:

Okay, one good dig at Apple by Google at its I/O event over the last two days seemed like the right thing to do given their recent bickering over a range of issues.

Two digs at its rival was probably appropriate. Three, welllll, okay, if you insist.

Unfortunately, the continued verbal jousts at Apple (AAPL) by many Google (GOOG) execs–including CEO Eric Schmidt–onstage at the San Francisco developers conference got tired pretty quickly and soon felt petty and juvenile, and ultimately made Google look needlessly defensive.

It’s part of a recent escalation of tensions between various powerful digital companies in Silicon Valley.

Even dopier: The search giant’s display of a “1984” poster with the motto, “Not the Future We Want,” which was a cloddish reference to Apple’s innovative commercial aimed at IBM (IBM) decades ago.

Note to Google: A scary search behemoth with a stranglehold on Internet advertising isn’t really believable as a victim of “The Man”–in this case, Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Still, there was Google Engineering VP Vic Gundotra–doing his best imitation of a geek Gary Cooper–noting in this video below that “if Google did not act, we faced a Draconian future in which one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice. That’s a future we don’t want.”

As they say so eloquently on the “Really!?! With Seth and Amy” segment on “Saturday Night Live”: Reaaaaaallly!?! Reaaaaaallly!?!

Memo to Vic: This is not “High Noon.” And Draconian is Chinese censorship. Draconian is Al-Qaeda. Draconian is a reptilian extraterrestrial race from the British science fiction television series “Doctor Who”!!!

While it’s fine and dandy–and de rigeur–to rev up developers, which is the ultimate purpose of this Android-focused event, I would much prefer Microsoft (MSFT) Steve Ballmer’s “Developers, developers, developers” sweatfest any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

As a former Microsoft exec, Gundotra should know that’s always a showstopper.

In any case, here is Gundotra’s speech yesterday to contrast to that sweaty Ballmer video, along with Jobs’s IBM-bashing introduction of Apple’s “1984” commercial, which is a primer on how you reaaaaalllly strafe a competitor.

Also the Draconians on “Dr. Who” and “Really!?! With Seth and Amy”:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Evidently that’s as true today as it was 12 years ago, because Apple (AAPL) has won a bundle of AdWeek’s “Best of the Decade” awards. The advertising trade mag named Apple “Brand of the Decade,” its “Get a Mac” ads ”Campaign of the Decade,” its iPod “Product of the Decade,” its iPod silhouettes ads “Out-of-Home Ad of the Decade” and CEO Steve Jobs “Marketer of the Decade.”

“Though the brand almost petered out in the ’90s, last year consumers told Interbrand that Apple was the thing they couldn’t live without and the one they found most inspiring,” AdWeek explains. “Why? Perhaps it’s Apple’s vaguely antiauthoritarian stance (epitomized in its iconic ’1984′ ad). A true-in-practice focus on relentlessly improving its products also helps. But maybe it comes down to this: Most brands are run by committee, but this one is the embodiment of a living, breathing person. Steve Jobs is Apple in the way that Richard Branson is Virgin. Of course it helps when you’re a brilliant marketer who happens to be the CEO.”

Apple, it’s worth noting, also came close to winning “Digital Company of the Decade,” but was bested by Google (GOOG), which was named “Media Company of the Decade” as well.

Below, an excerpt from the suit and the document in full:

On or about early-June, 2009, Mr. Gawronski purchased for $0.99 an electronic copy of George Orwell’s “1984″ for use on his Kindle 2 from Amazon’s Kindle Store. He purchased the book because it was assigned to him as a summer homework assignment by a teacher at his high school.

On or about July 20, 2009, after reading online about Amazon’s practice of remotely deleting copies of “1984″ from Kindles, Mr. Gawronski powered on his Kindle 2 only to watch “1984″ vanish before his very eyes. Because “1984″ was the most recent book he had been reading on his Kindle 2 prior to July 20, 2009, the Kindle 2 powered on to the last page of “1984″ Mr. Gawronski had been reading. Within moments of powering on his Kindle 2 to this page of “1984,” the entire e-book disappeared as Amazon immediately remotely deleted it from his Kindle 2.

Mr. Gawronksi did not consent to Amazon remotely deleting “1984″ from his Kindle 2.

As part of his studies of “1984,” Mr. Gawronski had made copious notes in the book. After Amazon remotely deleted “1984,” those notes were rendered useless because they no longer referenced the relevant parts of the book. The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as “remember this paragraph for your thesis” is useless if it does not actually a reference a specific paragraph. By deleting “1984″ from Mr. Gawronski’s Kindle 2, this is the position in which Amazon left him. Mr. Gawronski now needs to recreate all of his studies.

Amazon_Complaint

Here’s the text of his mea culpa, posted at a company-hosted bulletin board:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

If you’re feeling petty, you can note that this apology took six days to arrive. But that would make you petty. A bigger person would say that Bezos’ self-flagellation is pitch-perfect in every aspect and a rare admission of fallibility from an American leader.

Great, right?

Almost. Now all we need is for Amazon (AMZN) to promise that it won’t go into your Kindle and take away something you bought, ever again. But the e-commerce giant won’t say that.

Instead, it’s left open a big, worrisome loophole that it refuses to close. Amazon says it won’t forcibly remove your content from your Kindle “in these circumstances.” But it won’t say what circumstances would prompt it to take back product it’s sold.

That’s dumb. And doubly so coming from Amazon, a company that succeeds in large part because of its well-deserved reputation for kick-ass customer service.

And let’s be honest: Very few Kindle buyers are worried about losing their e-books in the middle of the night. And if Amazon wants to reserve the right to do this again, for specific reasons, well, that’s cool, too. Just spell it out, one way or another, and we can all move on.

I ask this because while Amazon has said it won’t repeat what it did last week, it hasn’t actually sworn off remote book-removal–or  remote anything-removal, for that matter–altogether.

Which means the e-commerce giant can do it again.

On Friday, Amazon told me that it yanked the George Orwell novels from customers’ e-book readers because they were “illegal”–bootlegged copies it never should have sold in the first place. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” the company said in a statement.

See the problem? It’s the, big, gaping “in these circumstances” loophole.

I’m still holding out a tiny bit of hope that Amazon (AMZN) is never going to delete a book, or anything it sells its customers, ever again. And that its oddly worded nonpromise is just an oddly worded nonpromise.

But I’ve repeatedly asked Amazon PR folks to mollify me, or at least spell out the circumstances in which they would delete a book again, and I haven’t gotten any response. So I’m fearing the worst: Amazon reserves the right to yank books out of your Kindle, but won’t tell you why or when until it happens.

If you want to play devil’s advocate, you can note that other e-commerce companies have similar abilities. Apple (AAPL) has disclosed that it has a “kill switch” that allows it to remotely wipe out apps from iPhones, ostensibly for security reasons.

And theoretically, the ability to wipe out a rogue iFart app should be as disconcerting as the ability to make a book disappear–intellectual property is intellectual property. But it just doesn’t rankle in the same way.

What to do? Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo wants new legislation to tackle the problem. But even if you like that approach, it’s not going to happen anytime soon–our lawmakers have full plates these days. My suggestion: Demand that Amazon, Apple or whoever else has remote access to your gadgets spell out exactly when, if ever, they will forcibly take back what they sold you. Or don’t buy from them at all.

Amazon has explained why it has been deleting some novels from its customers’ Kindles: It shouldn’t have been selling them in the first place.

Amazon (AMZN) says the copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ it removed without warning from some Kindles this week are “illegal” because the publisher didn’t have the rights to sell them.

Won’t happen again, the e-commerce giant says. Sort of:

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.

Here’s the thing: I refrained from making any Orwell references when I wrote about this earlier today. But doesn’t this statement have a hint of Newspeak to it?

If Amazon wanted to reassure customers worried that digital media they buy from the company might disappear, unannounced, it could do so very easily. It could just say: “We won’t be taking away stuff we sell you ever again. You buy it, you own it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a CD, or a collection of bytes.”

Because, as I noted before, that’s basically what the Kindle license already says: Amazon says it “grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content.” The company doesn’t seem to add any caveats that I can see.

I’m hoping Amazon’s language here is just an awkward bit of PRspeak, and not a lawyerly way of reserving the right to pull stuff off Kindles sometime down the road. But I’ve asked, and will let you know if I hear back.

What happened? The details are fuzzy, but apparently, a publisher that supplied Amazon (AMZN) with two George Orwell titles has decided that it doesn’t want to sell them via Amazon anymore. So away they went.

Readers described their experiences at this Amazon forum, and one of them included this note she said she received from Amazon customer service explaining what happened:

The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.

Normally, I’m pretty cavalier about the complaints that people make about the evils of digital rights management–the locks and restrictions distributors often attach to digital media like music, movies and books–but this is the sort of incident that gives those gripes some gravitas. If you’re buying bits, you ought to own those bits, just as you would when you plunk down dollars for a CD, a book or any other physical item.

Doubly confusing: As far as I can tell, Amazon’s license terms don’t have any loophole that allows for this. The section on “digital content” explains that I don’t have the right to “sell, rent, lease, distribute,” etc., the stuff I buy from Amazon. But it sure looks like stuff I buy, I keep:

Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

So, what am I missing here? I’ve asked Amazon for comment, but if anyone has any bright ideas, sound off in comments below.

UPDATE: Amazon says the copies it sold were “illegal”, because the publisher never had the rights to them. But it says that going forward, it won’t be removing books from customer’s Kindles “in these circumstances”.

UPDATE:

Mark Papermaster’s memory of Apple and IBM old rivalry is quite a bit better than originally thought. Turns out the quote that inspired this post was excerpted from a longer, far less contentious statement by an Information Week reporter.

What Papermaster said in his declaration was this:

Until this litigation effort by IBM, aside from the divested IBM personal computer business and a single sale several years ago of Apple’s Xserve product to a university, I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM.”

What Information Week reported him as saying was this:

I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM.”

A juicy quote, to be sure, but without the caveat that preceded it, an inaccurate one. My apologies to Mark Papermaster.

This is pretty funny.

Mark Papermaster, the 26-year IBM (IBM) veteran being sued by his employer for taking a job at Apple (AAPL), is convinced Big Blue’s suit is entirely without merit. Why? Apple doesn’t compete with IBM and never has.

“I do not recall a single instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM during my entire tenure at IBM,” Papermaster said in a court filing.

Now, I know Apple’s famous “1984″ ad (see below) is a few decades old now, and memories of the company’s 1984 Annual Shareholders meeting are well faded, even at Apple. But surely someone, somewhere in Cupertino must recall CEO Steve Jobs’s comments at that meeting.

The early 1980s. 1981–Apple II has become the world’s most popular computer, and Apple has grown to a $300 million corporation, becoming the fastest-growing company in American business history. With over 50 companies vying for a share, IBM enters the personal computer market in November 1981, with the IBM PC.

IBM wants it all, and is aiming its guns at its last obstacle to industry control, Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?

I’d say that qualifies as an instance of Apple being described as a competitor of IBM, wouldn’t you?

Apple legal must be on a class trip or something….