Mountain View, California — The quarrel that broke out last summer among Google, Apple and AT&T over Google Voice remains unresolved, But global search leader Google is not waiting for a thaw in the frosty standoff. On Tuesday, the company unveiled a spruced-up mobile Web version of Google Voice tailored for the iPhone, as well as the Palm Pre, making it much easier to make calls and receive voice mails from their Google Voice numbers. Vincent Paquet, senior product manager for Google Voice, said the new mobile Web version of the product was as good as the native app, which runs on Android mobile phones.
The Google Voice update, which was announced yesterday, takes Google one step closer to delivering iPhone users the native Google Voice experience they have been demanding since Apple rejected the native Google Voice app from their App store.
Of course, iPhone users were always able to direct their mobile Web browser to m.google.com/voice to obtain their Google Voice accounts. But a number of functions did not work properly. For example, making calls was a two-step process and the outbound caller ID feature did not work, meaning that the person receiving the call could not see who was calling, which is one of the more compelling features of Google Voice. Paquet said that all those problems had been solved, and that the new version of Google Voice also offered free text messaging.
The release of Google Voice complies with Google’s rollout of the latest version of its Chrome web browser, which contains advanced HTML5 capabilities. According to Google, one of the advantages of HTML5 is that it allows running faster, smoother and richer web-based applications in the browser by significantly reducing load times and network requests.
Google’s decision to avoid Apple’s App Store could encourage developers to use the web instead of getting Apple approval.
“Today, we are excited to introduce the Google Voice web app for the iPhone and Palm WebOS devices,” wrote Google on their Mobile blog.
“This HTML5 application empowers you with a fast and versatile mobile experience for Google Voice because it uses the latest advancements in web technologies. For example, AppCache lets you interact with web apps without a network connection and local databases allow you to store data locally on the device, so you do not lose data even when you close the browser.”
Paquet said the quarrel with Apple remained unsolved. “We have not heard back from Apple on this,” he said.
“The new web app also allows you to display your Google Voice number as the outbound caller ID, so return calls come back to your Google Voice number,” wrote Google Software Engineer Michael van Ouwerkerk in a blog. Additionally, users can “send and receive text messages for free, and place international calls at Google Voice’s low rates.”
The functionality delivered by the new Google Voice app is largely the same as it would be on a native mobile app like the one available for Google’s Android-powered smartphones. The app performs a decent task of showing transcribed voicemails, missed calls, and SMS messages in one inbox. You can also send SMS messages from the app for free, which trumps AT&T and its ridiculous fees on text messages.
The application works with all versions of Palm WebOS and iPhone OS 3.0 and higher.