Google Voice was rejected in July of 2009. In October of 2009 AT&T unilaterally (maybe after seeing how the FCC was thinking) amended their customer agreements to allow VOIP over the cellular network. Once that camel nose came under the tent the difference between VOIP phones and the builtin phone started to go away. Now in March of 2010 Line2 has been altered and accepted to deliver VOIP on the cellular network.
As submitted, Google Voice had several problems, including a massive privacy violation that would have held up any app. It is reasonable to think that they could have worked through those. The "duplicates the dialer, voicemail, and SMS" seems to be the key objection that Google could not, or chose not, to work around, but at least for voice calls that is changing as evidenced by Line2. I never saw SMS come up explicitly, but surely AT&T would not be happy to see that cash cow vanish. The question is if they had enough foresight and clout to get it protected in their agreement with Apple.
And, at least if you believe the statements to the FCC, AT&T has never had anything to do with the acceptance or rejection of the Google Voice app. So Apple ends up looking rather hypocritical here, when all of it's stated reasons for rejecting Google Voice also apply to Line2's app and yet that app was accepted.
Not true. Line2 was wifi only and was positioned as an additonal line, not a replacement.
I think the prevailing meme is clearly missing something. Like, why did google quit instead of addressing the flaws. Apple stated officially on the record that google voice was not rejected, in december, did google get discouraged and give up? Are they still in queue? Are they happier with a reason for people to buy android phones than fir iPhone users to be able to have convenient access to their google voice accounts?
Did people even want a native google voice app for anything other than subverting their voice/SMS contract? I use google voice, and I'd like a native voicemail viewer for it, but I don't need to replace my SMS program or dialer.
I'm not disputing that Line2 was originally wifi only. That's not relevant though, since Apple didn't complain about Google Voice using the 3g network to initiate calls in its FCC statement. From the TC article linked above:
"When [you get a] call, the service can either relay the call to your ‘real’ number (the AT&T number assigned to your iPhone), or it can send it to voicemail, depending on the way you’ve set up your call filters."
This is exactly what Google Voice does, and Line2 even included a similar "visual voicemail" feature from the start. It also duplicated the iPhone's dialer pixel for pixel. In Apple's FCC statement the stated reasons for Google Voice's rejection were re-routing of voicemail, duplication of "visual voicemail," and duplication of the iPhone's native dialing functionality.
Is there a claim in the FCC statement against the Google Voice app that doesn't also apply to Line2's app?
And Google didn't address the flaws, because there were no flaws to address! As the acceptance of the Line2 app makes clear, all of Apple's stated complaints about GV weren't real, so why try to get around them when the app will just be rejected for some other completely ridiculous reason?
Well the decision on Google Maps was made when the iPhone first came out right? Before Android even existed, so before Apple even had any reason to fear Google. That doesn't explain why Apple hasn't now switched to something else though. Maybe cause Google Maps is just too good to leave out? I don't know.
What I do know is that Google Maps isn't attempting to commoditize smart phones like Google Voice is. So Apple has more reason to spite Google by rejecting Voice than Maps.
Interesting, but I highly doubt Steve Jobs personally approves every application. I find it strange that people keep quoting "wtf, Jobs?" and similar when he's the guy at the top, and isn't doing the job of every employee who makes a decision.
And I'm one of the crowd who is wondering how long it'll last. It seems designed to be denied / ejected.
Well he does probably determine long-term strategy with respect to competitors like Google, so he can set the tone under which the Google Voice rejection took place. And you never know, he might have been personally involved in a decision like that.
For those of you wondering if Apple is going to remove this from the App Store: they almost certainly won't.
Line2 was first submitted to the App Store in August 2009, which was really bad timing because it was in the middle of the Apple/Google Voice storm. A month later it was approved (after the founder pestered Apple a lot). And I'm pretty sure the version Pogue is reviewing was actually released last month (http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/line2-google-voice/).
In other words, none of this is news to Apple, though it's clearly hypocritical on their part. Also, no way Apple would pull this after a Pogue review — he'd probably write about it, and he's proven before with his 'Take Back The Beep' campaign that he can incite quite an uproar.
How is this substantively different from the Skype iPhone application, with an in-bound phone number? The major usability barrier to me there is the inability to have Skype run in the background on the phone (reasonably so, since it would kill battery life); does Line2 somehow work around this?
Edit: Never mind, I should have finished reading the article before posting. Line2 routes calls through the cellular network when the app isn't running.
I use it on my iPhone, dropped my unlimited plan to 450 minutes, saves $30/month Toktumi is only $15/month so saves $180/year and now I can actually use my iPhone at home. Very cool app, going to test on my iPod one of these days too.
I'm happy that iPhone owners now have something even better than Google Voice. But how can Apple possibly defend the Google Voice rejection now? I hope the FCC gets involved again. I'm offended on Google's behalf.
Damn Line2 does exists, for one moment while reading the article, I thought the author was joking and talking about that imaginary VoIP app of everyone's dream. Then I searched in iTunes and it's a reality.
This is great publicity for Line2, assuming Apple doesn't decide to remove their app from the App Store due to the attention this article will bring to them.
