Apple squashes Google Voice iPhone apps

Jake Widman
Thursday, 30 July 2009 02:41

Your IT - Mobility

Whether the driving force behind the removal of the Google Voice apps was Apple itself or AT&T is unclear.

Both companies have refused to address the issue, Apple with its usual "no comment" and AT&T by referring questions to Apple.

It's hard to figure out why Apple would care if people used the iPhone to access Google Voice, but several of the company's decisions regarding iPhone apps have appeared capricious.

Plus, of course, Apple is well known for jealously guarding its turf, so it would be premature to rule it out as the culprit.

But it makes more sense that AT&T would object, because it provides the services that Google Voice competes with.
However, on his Daring Fireballs blog , John Gruber points out that "all iPhone carrier partners pay Apple a hefty subsidy for every iPhone sold, and that subsidy is based on assumptions about how much the average iPhone customer is going to pay in monthly service charges."

While a reduction in those charges is a direct threat to AT&T's bottom line, it's at least an indirect one to Apple's.

But in a late update to his blog, Gruber writes that a "reliable little birdie" has confirmed to him that it was, indeed, AT&T who didn't want any part of Google Voice on the iPhone.