Updated: at&t denies involvement in the Google Voice app rejection

by Justin Horn on Jul 29th, 2009 @ 12:05 pm

att-or-apple

UPDATE Saga continuing faster than I thought…looks like Sean Kovacs, GV Mobile developer, got an email from Apple blaming AT&T (Thanks for the link Dave).

UPDATE 2 Also, take a look at a post by the developers of VoiceCentral  reviewing the conversation they  had with Apple about their app being removed.

The latest app store rejection of Google Voice is turning out to be a real whodunit! The signs were all pointing to AT&T yesterday, but I wasn’t convinced by John Gruber’s little birdie. It wasn’t until later in the day when Gruber responded to Om Malik’s argument against pointing the finger at AT&T, similar to my own,  that got me rethinking the situation:

Om Malik

Some allege that Apple is doing this at AT&T’s behest. That is just flat-out wrong: If it were true, then Google Voice would be banned on BlackBerry devices that use AT&T as well.

Gruber

But, trust me, it was AT&T’s decision. And this is not the first time AT&T has treated the iPhone differently than other phones they carry. Remember the SlingPlayer app? At AT&T’s behest, the iPhone version was restricted to Wi-Fi, despite the fact that the BlackBerry version works over 3G.

I wanted to see if I could get AT&T to officially chime in, so I left a ‘strongly worded’ comment (they usually respond to the crazy ones :) ) on AT&T’s Facebook page in regards to the Google Voice app rejection and here’s what they had to say:

Justin, We’re really not trying to dodge this, but you will have to talk to Apple regarding its App Store. AT&T is not involved in the approval process, so we cannot speak to this issue.

Not that I was expecting a detailed answer, but AT&T has now gone on record denying they had anything to do with it. So I think after reviewing everything (again) I’m going to stick with my first conclusion from yesterday…I don’t know.  The saga continues…

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Apple vs ?, at&t, Featured post, iPhone apps

Comments

    1.
  1. Dave
    July 29th, 2009 12:35 pm

    It appears that someone is lying here. See here.

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