San Francisco — As Google Voice barely begins to capture the world of personal phone calls, Apple Inc., the iPhone technocrat has reportedly banned Google Voice as an iPhone application, in a latest sign of growing rivalry between the powerful Silicon Valley allies, which have drawn recent regulatory attention for their close ties.
According to different reports on Monday, and later a Google spokesperson confirmed it: “Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users–for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.”
In addition, all popular third-party applications that use Google Voice have been pulled by Apple, according to a report in TechCrunch. An Apple spokesperson on Monday told Sean Kovacs, an independent programmer whose GV Mobile app was rejected, that some of the small program’s functions were too close to what the iPhone already offers.
Obviously, Apple is not concerned for a long time that these apps duplicated the phone’s features. After all, you can still get the Skype app to make and receive VoIP calls, and apps like TextFree and iText let you send and receive unlimited SMS texts without using AT&T’s over-priced service ($10 a month for 200 messages in and out).
Google Voice is a service still under experimental phase that allows users to receive calls from multiple phone numbers and place cheap international calls.
The Apple’s decision comes in spite of the fact that Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive, holds a seat on Apple’s board of directors, which has triggered an antitrust inquiry by the US Federal Trade Commission, and the fact that the two are among the big technology firms subject to a Justice Department inquiry into whether they have improper policies against poaching each other’s employees.
Apple and Google are on good terms elsewhere. The default search engine for the iPhone is Google’s and Google Maps is another core function.
In a similar battle, Apple allows Skype, the voice over internet protocol service, to work at Wi-Fi hotspots but not over AT&T’s main data connections.
While using Google Voice still uses airtime minutes, the inexpensive international calls could cut into AT&T profits. “I think it is AT&T being concerned about consumers looking to manage their costs,” said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin.
AT&T and Apple declined to comment. Google said it “will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users”.