Apple puts the kibosh on Google Voice Apps

Posted by Al Warmington on Tue 28 Jul 2009

iPhone's tightrope walk is beginning to look a little wobbly, writes Al Warmington

Apple has officially pulled the plug on Google’s highly promising GV Mobile App, removing it from the iTunes App Store, along with other Google Voice applications. The official reason: GV Mobile was “duplicating features that the iPhone comes with.”

GV Mobile, once known as GrandCentral before the tech was acquired by Google, is a service that lets you lets you make cheap calls, free calls, send SMS texts and re-direct calls, it transcribes your voicemail by machine and it gives you one number that can be used across any device that you have GV mobile (or other Google Voice applications) installed on.

Taken at face value, you can understand why Apple may have reached the conclusion that it’s duplicating the iPhone dialler, SMS functions, etc.

But here’s the twist: according to GV Mobile developer Sean Kovacs, the free App was personally given the thumbs up by Phil Schiller – Apple’s senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing and the guy who now acts as front man when El Jobso can’t.

So is this yet more evidence of the cataclysmic shambles that is the iTunes App Store Approval process? Or something more sinister? Worryingly, it appears to be the latter. TechCrunch, along with many other critics across the pond, has suggested that iPhone’s US network carrier, AT&T, is the real reason for the unpopular decision. AT&T has kicked up a fuss about Apps before – one of the reasons iPhone tethering is still an unholy mess.

The network could probably see its call revenue and SMS revenue draining away – not to mention the fact that Google Voice will finally liberate your number from an individual network – and had a bit of hissy.

For Apple, keeping its customers satisfied and its network partners sweet, is becoming a balancing act that now looks increasingly unstable.

All this doesn’t really affect UK iPhone owners too much – GV Mobile is still in a very early stage and has yet to launch outside the US. However, the idea behind it is brilliant and potentially one of the most forward thinking bits of mobile tech invented in the last few years. iPhone is not the only platform it runs on either; Google Voice apps have already launched on BlackBerry and Android, so in the end, it’s only Apple and its customers that stand to suffer from its loss. Now would seem like a very opportune time for Palm Pre to step up...

Link: Apple, Google Voice (via Gizmodo)