August 26, 2009, 8:47 PM — So Monday I mentioned that Apple and AT&T both took credit for keeping Google Voice off the iPhone, citing both companies' statements to the FCC, in which Apple said listed a host of reasons why Google Voice was unwanted on the iPhone, and AT&T chiming in to say that it and Apple had a deal to keep VOIP apps off. Which is all well and good, except that Google Voice is not, as a helpful reader pointed out to me, actually a VOIP app (despite the fact that its Wikipedia article is clearly in the VOIP services category).
In fact, Google Voice is plain old telephone service, routing calls along the phone network to existing ten-digit phone numbers in ways that ordinary phone services can't. By coincidence, I talked on the phone to a Google Voice-using friend today; he was sitting in his office with his cell phone in his pocket, and when I called him on his Google Voice number, both phones started ringing simultaneously (this was, by all accounts, fairly startling). If he had wanted to call me, he could have gone online to initiate a call; some phone-dialing gadget deep in Google's underground lair would have first called his phone (or phones), and then called mine.
There are lots of interesting things about the implications of this for the iPhone. First off, as near as I can tell AT&T would have absolutely no reason to fear the service, and I'm not sure why anyone would think they would. You conduct your phone call over the regular phone service, and thus you use your AT&T minutes just as you would with an ordinary call. Google Voice does offer cheap international dialing (from your phone's perspective, you're connected on a domestic call), but I have to imagine that international calling is a pretty small part of AT&T's revenue.
With the money issue out of the way, Apple's complaints about Google Voice to the FCC are therefore easier to take at face value: the Google Voice app interface directs you away from Apple's own phone interface, which is, as far as Apple is concerned, the One True Interface Of Goodness. Obviously since there is a Google Voice web front end (the screenshot of which on Google's support page is blatantly from the iPhone!), Apple can't stop you from using the service, but they can make it harder to supplant their own phone app. It's sort of endearing to think that this dispute isn't really about some kind of short-term money grab, but rather is all about classic Apple UI control freakery.
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