San Francisco — With the recent chain of events between tech titans Google and Apple, which had its iPhone app famously jilted by Apple for inclusion in the iPhone App Store in July, according to the New York Times, Google is now adopting a new strategy by reorganizing an iPhone Web app for its Google Voice service and releasing the application for free online.
This bitterness between the duo has even initiated an FCC investigation of the incident. Many have widely suspected AT&T to be involved in the rejection, although AT&T has denied any involvement.
Nevertheless, Google is not sparing any moment for the FCC to act against Apple and make it include the Google Voice widget in the App Store. Instead, Google has adopted the next logical strategy and just taking all of the functionality from its rebuffed iPhone app and turning it an iPhone Web app.
Last week, in a New York Times column dedicated by David Pogue concerning the ongoing saga of Apple and Google Voice, he reveals that Google has already found a loophole:
Already, Google says it is re-developing a substitute for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app — except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page, including free SMS messaging and reduced-rate international calling. For all intents and purposes, it will function exactly the same way as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen.
This re-styling might actually foster more attention on iPhone Web apps in general, since these Web pages look and feel much native iPhone apps, you can even add icons for them to the iPhone screen except that they open in the mobile Safari browser.
Google Voice is a free application that enables users to designate a single number to ring their home, work, and cell phones, and also get voice mail as text transcriptions. There is much speculation that AT&T is having a upper-hand behind the decision to block the application since Google Voice allows cheap international calls and free text messages.
So far it has not been described clearly if only by making Google Voice available as a Web app will make Apple chafe of cheer more, but there is precedent. Apple also rejected Google’s Latitude for the iPhone until it was remade as Web app.
This latest move by Google brings to light some interesting possibilities for other software developers whose products have been rejected from the App Store. Releasing an application online does not come with the same built-in publicity as Apple’s popular marketplace, but it does offer a possible fall-back option for aspiring iPhone software developers who do not measure up to Apple’s criteria.
A Google spokesperson did not say how close to completion the project might be, but reiterated a previous statement. “We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users, for example by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.”
Unless Apple changes its standards in the near future, we can expect to see plenty of developers follow Google’s lead or at least try. However, if you are desperate to you It should be noted you can currently visit a text-heavy version of Google Voice on your iPhone by pointing Safari to google.com/voice/m.