Apple squashes Google Voice iPhone apps

Jake Widman
Thursday, 30 July 2009 02:41

Your IT - Mobility

Three iPhone apps that offered mobile access to Google Voice have been rejected from the App Store, including two that had been available for months already.

Google's own Google Voice app, Sean Kovacs's GV Mobile, and Riverturn's VoiceCentral have been rejected by the store.

Google's app was still in the application process, but the other two apps had been on the store since April.

Google Voice is a free service that gives subscribers a single phone number that can be set to ring through to home phones, work phones, and cell phones. You can set up rules for which phones ring depending on time of day, origin of call, and other characteristics.

But Google Voice can also record voice mails and let you retrieve them online or over the phone, as well as transcribe them and send the treanscriptions via e-mail or SMS. And it can let you place calls that appear to come from your Google Voice number.

Apple isn't saying that those features are the sticking point, but in separate conversations reported by the two third-party developers, an Apple representative did confirm that the apps were rejected because they duplicated some of the iPhone' features.

The real question is, was it Apple who objected, or was it AT&T?

CONTINUED Page 2.