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Google strikes back at Apple, releases new Google Voice for iPhone
- dirtbox 17y agoI love it when big players start throwing competitive punches, and we're set to win big from Google attacking such a monopolistic clique as the cellular network industry. I suppose this also means that Google Voice is nearly ready for a public release.
- ugh 17y agoHonest question: Could somebody explain to me why it is bad for Apple when iPhone owners can use Google Voice?
- InclinedPlane 17y agoMost likely because it violates some term or other in an exclusivity agreement between AT&T and Apple for the iPhone.
- ugh 17y agoSo it's not bad for Apple, only bad for the Apple-AT&T relationship? Apple might as well not care and happily approve the app if such terms didn't exist?
- InclinedPlane 17y ago"Apple might as well not care and happily approve the app if such terms didn't exist?" Likely so. Note that there is a Skype app for the iPhone but it is restricted such that it will only make voice calls through wifi. It's rumored that AT&T has been opposed to VoIP traffic over its 3G data network though it has just recently finished work necessary to make such things feasible and may reverse its earlier decisions (paving the way for full-featured skype and google voice iPhone apps).
- stanleydrew 17y agoBut GV isn't a VoIP service. So AT&T opening up its 3G network to VoIP traffic will have no effect on Apple's decision to accept or reject a GV app, and it can't have played any part in the original rejection.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoHow is Google Voice not VoIP? When one uses Google Voice one's voice is transmitted over an IP network, that seems to be the very definition of VoIP. Attempting to claim otherwise would seem to be to play semantic games.
- stanleydrew 17y agoI'm sorry, but you are mistaken. Your voice is not transmitted over an IP network with Google Voice. That's why it's not VoIP. There are no semantic games involved. Since I feel like I've beat this to death a few times before, I'll just point you to this: http://www.itworld.com/print/75774 http://www.itworld.com/print/75774. And yes the Wikipedia entry for Google Voice is mistaken. I should probably fix that for them...
- stanleydrew 17y agoNo, Apple seems to think it's bad for Apple. If you read the companies' statements to the FCC it's clear that AT&T was not involved and that it was purely Apple's decision to reject the GV app.
- stanleydrew 17y agoThis kind of speculation is unnecessary. There's been plenty written on this subject, including statements from Google, Apple and AT&T. The fact of the matter is that Apple thinks GV will confuse iPhone owners because it replaces the phone's native dialing functionality, among other things. It's similar to the reasons Apple gave for rejecting Google Latitude (i.e. replacing native functionality), although that rejection was a lot more bogus.
- GHFigs 17y agoThe application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail. -- http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/ http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/
- ugh 17y agoNot exactly convincing. And to me highly confusing behavior. They certainly wouldn’t do something like this just to spite Google?
- awt 17y agoAnyone know a way to run this in an Site-specific-browser app on the iPhone?
- lt 17y agoClick the + icon on Safari's bottom menu. Select "Add to Home Screen".
- Timothee 17y agoAs I wrote above, this really just add a shortcut to the page. When you click it, it opens a new tab in Mobile Safari.
- Timothee 17y agoNot really. What lt describes basically creates a shortcut on the springboard, but Mobile Safari accepts specific meta definition that announces the current page as stand-alone so that when launched from the springboard, it is not really launching Safari but just a site-specific browser, without the status bar at the top, nor the toolbar at the bottom. Unfortunately, it has to be written in the page rather than you deciding what you want to do when adding it to the springboard. It's the case with all Google products except Google Talk strangely and I find that's too bad…
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agosomeone should make an app that just calls this page and submit it to apple.
- mannkind 17y agoCopy the following javascript on your iPhone... javascript:var%20s=document.createElement('meta');s.setAttribute('content',%20'yes');s.setAttribute('name',%20'apple-mobile-web-app-capable');document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild(s);alert('Now%20add%20the%20webpage%20to%20your%20home%20screen!');void(s); * Visit voice.google.com * Paste javascript into address bar, click "Go" * Dismiss notification ("Now add the webpage to your homescreen") * Add Google Voice to your Home Screen. I didn't test it too much, but it appears to work fine in a SSB.
- Sidnicious 17y agoSteve Jobs is finally getting what he wanted from developers back when the iPhone was released: web apps being developed instead of native applications. Developers love the SDK, web apps are obviously-less capable than native applications, but there's no approval process for web apps. That's what this has come down to: it doesn't matter how good the platform is if you can't distribute.
- stanleydrew 17y agoBut the app store has been instrumental in growing the iPhone's popularity. Why would Jobs prefer web apps? Or am I missing some sarcasm here?
- lallysingh 17y agoThe app store, like the music store, makes a little over breakeven. All Jobs really cares about is selling more phones -- the rest is just to support this primary goal.
- stanleydrew 17y agoRight, but that's exactly my point. The native apps are fueling sales of the phone. The Apple ads don't say "10,000,000 web apps available online," they say "100,000 apps available in the app store." So I'm not seeing how Steve Jobs can possibly have wanted developers to create web apps all along?
- ericd 17y agoHe's referring to the fact that when the iPhone was released, Jobs strongly played down the importance of a native SDK and played up the idea of making iPhone-centric webapps. It was some months before they released the native SDK.
- Sidnicious 17y agoThis is what I meant. Web apps are becoming important again not because there's no SDK but because the SDK is effectively unusable for some applications.
- ErrantX 17y agoTypical itworld bait headline :( (they haven't - it's a web app) EDIT: this is the second time in the last couple of days an itworld article made it to the front page. Im guessing it is because of new-er HN users? FYI itworld is usually content-less and mundane (through to outright baiting) :) best to hunt for another source if the story seems interesting. (abennet also IMO pushes the "it's ok to self post" boundary a bit too far... but that's another issue)
- GHFigs 17y ago"Strikes back?" I don't think anybody at Apple is going to be upset by this, given that they publicly recommended it: Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple’s Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its “Google-branded” user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices. -- http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/ http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/
- enomar 17y agoExactly. This is why it's better to link to the original material instead of some sensationalist headline. http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-voice-for-iphone-and-palm-webos.html http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-voice-for...
- ErrantX 17y agoHN link for that blog post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078040 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078040
- jkincaid 17y agoI think Google is "striking back" in the sense that it's planting the Google Voice 'seed' while Apple probably wants to keep it off the iPhone entirely. If each company had an internal monologue, I think it would go something like this: Apple: "We don't want Google Voice on the iPhone, period. But we'll publicly tell Google they're fine to put it on as a handicapped web app, because we couldn't stop that anyway, and it makes us look like we don't have anything against it. But we do. We are worried that Google will convert the iPhone into a shell for its own products, which is why we're talking to other search engines and are (probably) building our own Maps app." Google: "Fine. We'll build a web app, and it will be sort of shitty. But we'll keep updating it with the latest HTML5 tricks and make it pretty damn good for a web app — far better than most other companies could do anyway. We're going to release Google Voice to the public later this year, and iPhone users will be able to try it for themselves with the web app. When they find out that the experience would be even better if Apple would approve our native app, maybe we'll see a grassroots movement. Maybe not. Either way, we're keeping our best native apps on Android." To anyone who thinks that Apple is worried about the user experience and reproducing core functionality, that's all misdirection. There are plenty of applications that similarly reproduce some of the iPhone's core functionality. There are a few apps that do EXACTLY what Google Voice does, but are targeted at a different market. Apple is trying to keep its control over the iPhone for competitive reasons, not because they're worried about user confusion.
- axod 17y agoThis is why the web wins. It would be absolutely unprecedented for a browser to start blocking certain sites, or restrict the user inside a browser.
- stanleydrew 17y agoI can't imagine that this will satisfy those of us who have become accustomed to the tight integration of GV with Android. But it is good to see Google working to provide some support for iPhone owners.
- j3g 17y agocool, I jailbroke and have a gvoice app which is buggy but works 90% of the time
- swolchok 17y agoStill not a data-only enabler -- greets the user with a "what is the number of this phone" dialog on first use. Guess I shouldn't expect 100% free outgoing from Google; they probably don't stand to make money on that.
- joeyo 17y agoI suspect data-only is coming. After all, Google merged with Gizmo5.
- stanleydrew 17y agoYes, GV itself is not a data only enabler. We must wait for Google to integrate the recently acquired Gizmo5 for that. I expect Google to roll out a seamless data only mobile service integrating GV and Gizmo5 with plans from T-mobile by the end of the year, and hopefully during the summer.
- wmf 17y agoA data-only phone is a pipe dream. VoIPo3G sucks (http://gigaom.com/2010/01/19/iphone-the-lack-of-voice-over-3g-alternative-theory/ http://gigaom.com/2010/01/19/iphone-the-lack-of-voice-over-3...) and uses more bandwidth than a circuit-switched call. Data is temporarily priced lower than voice minutes, but you can expect this to change if VoIP becomes popular. The carriers will have their ARPU; it's just a question of how they get it out of you.
- toisanji 17y agoI literally just released my own version last night. http://googlevoicer.com http://googlevoicer.com Google's older version was horrible. Their newer version is nicer, but still very slow because of all the page loading. To make it better they should cache the whole application in the browser.
- mshafrir 17y agoIf I visit your site on my laptop/desktop, I should get an idea of what your service looks like/offers. I don't want to have to wait until I pull it up on my iPhone/iTouch.
- e1ven 17y agoTwo notes- 1, your app doesn't set a default bookmark name, defaulting to "Untitled"; 2, I don't really feel comfortable handing over my google username/password to you- No offense intended, it's just bad policy. Can you do this via OAuth?
- toisanji 17y agoThanks for the tips! The username and password is stored on your phone via sqlite, which is then sent to my server where I keep an open connection between with google voice, I don't store the actual username and password anywhere. I understand your concern about credentials, I was thinking about releasing the code to my server.
- bonaldi 17y agoIf only Apple would ban them from the UK so they could strike back by opening Google Voice up here, too.