Apple lied to FCC, Google Voice was rejected July 7th

by Justin Horn on Sep 18th, 2009 @ 12:14 pm

The FCC began an investigation into the Google Voice iPhone app rejection what seems like forever ago now. Part of Google’s response to the FCC was redacted at Google’s request, but now Google has announced on their blog that they have asked the FCC to remove the restriction:

Shortly afterward, several individuals and organizations submitted Freedom of Information Act requests with the FCC seeking access to this information. While we could have asked the FCC to oppose those requests, in light of Apple’s decision to make its own letter fully public and in the interest of transparency, we decided to drop our request for confidentiality. Today the FCC posted the full content of our letter to their website (PDF).

Google’s full response from the new underacted portions goes into more detail about the Google Voice rejection:

On July 7, Mr. Eustace and Mr. Schiller spoke over the phone.  It was during this call that Mr. Schiller informed Mr. Eustace that Apple was rejecting the Google voice appliation for the reasons desribed above in 2(a).

2(a): Apple’s representatives informed Google that the Google Voice application was rejected because Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone. The Apple representatives indicated that the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality.

I’m not sure if you remember Apple’s answer to the FCC question “Why did Apple reject the Google Voice application for iPhone”, if not here it is:

Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.

Apple continued their response with the duplication argument that Google stated as the reason for rejection, but somebody is lying here and I’m betting it’s not Google. I believe Apple moved the app from the rejected pile to “app purgatory” after the FCC started poking around as a delay tactic. I also feel that if it were not for the FCC the app would have been permanently buried like Google Latitude, which was rejected for similar reasons. Whether it was rejected or not, the fact that they allow Skype in and not Google Voice should be a concern for the FCC.

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