Why AT&T Killed iPhone Google Voice 304
ZuchinniOne writes "The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article about the likely reasons that AT&T and Apple killed the Google Voice application. 'With Google Voice, you have one Google phone number that callers use to reach you, and you pick up whichever phone — office, home or cellular — rings. You can screen calls, listen in before answering, record calls, read transcripts of your voicemails, and do free conference calls. Domestic calls and texting are free, and international calls to Europe are two cents a minute. In other words, a unified voice system, something a real phone company should have offered years ago.'"
AT&T denies it (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T told the FCC that they did not have it killed.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/21/att-to-fcc-we-did-not-block-the-google-voice-app-on-the-iphone/ [techcrunch.com]
Full List (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a full list for the lazy:
AT&T had nothing to do with it, apparently (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T claims the didn't kill it (Score:4, Informative)
This is sort of interesting to watch, whose business relationship is decaying faster, Apple and Google's or Apple and AT&T's? (Or Microsoft's and Dell or MS and HP, but that's a different thread.)
Apple Admits It, Sort Of (Score:5, Informative)
And Apple said today it isn't killed, but still under review because it interferes with the iPhone interface. Here [apple.com] is their rationalization for their actions in what they claim is their response to the FCC.
My thanks to daringfireball and John Gruber for bringing this letter to my attention.
All three reports (Score:5, Informative)
I love how the speculation gets posted here when the official statements from all three companies are readily available. The only major redaction is Google's side of the story on why GV and other apps were rejected.
Re:Wall Street Journal (Score:5, Informative)
This particular article was pretty good though. Thorough and generally well thought out, it also had that kind of shocked anger of someone who only just realized that they are being taken advantage of. I wouldn't be surprised if the author had started out writing a 'tell both sides of the story' kind of article, only to become more informed on the actual situation over the course of his research.
All that being said, I do take issue with one thing...
Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and others all joined AT&T in bidding huge amounts for wireless spectrum in FCC auctions, some $70-plus billion since the mid-1990s. That all gets passed along to you and me in the form of higher fees and friendly oligopolies that don't much compete on price.
That is not how business works. If a certain behavior on their part can maximize revenues, they will implement it regardless of what the upfront costs were. If they had paid $10 for the spectrum, they would still charge high fees because that is what the market is willing to bear and that is what they feel with maximize their revenues and with that their profits. You can argue that the cost of spectrum raises the cost of entry into the market, but I don't see that as what the author is going for here.
Apple Just Admitted To It - Now You Look Foolish (Score:5, Informative)
Apple just admitted that it was them and not AT&T.
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/?sr=hotnews.rss [apple.com]
So much for all that crap you just wrote.
It will be funny to see all the Apple fanboys who were screaming "It was big bad AT&T and not my PRECIOUS Apple who was the bad guy!!!" and how their fanboy minds deal with this news.
Man, Apple couldn't possibly be blowing it more than they are. Google Voice is amazing.
Re:"texting is free"...? (Score:1, Informative)
the one thing that doesn't make sense is the 'free texting' portion - the SMS still has to be sent to your phone by your carrier, so how would it be any less expensive than normal?
It isn't less expensive than normal - the cost to physically provide the SMS service is the same: VIRTUALLY NOTHING.
What the cell phone carrier loses is the ability to charge pigopolist SMS rates with ridiculous margins, since the SMS is now carried by Google.
Re:But Skype is not blocked (Score:4, Informative)
LOL! Where's Your God Now Apple Fanbois? (Score:0, Informative)
The hottest cellphone app being blocked by your beloved Apple!
Don't cry emo assclowns, you still your iFart and I'm Rich iPhone apps...
AT&T is really AT&T. (Score:5, Informative)
SBC, which was originally "Southwest Bell", one of the "baby bells" created by the breakup of AT&T, and which had purchased several other baby bells in the intervening period, in 2005 also purchased AT&T (not just the AT&T name), and applied the AT&T name to the whole post-merger organization.
So, the new AT&T is, very much, the old (pre-1984) AT&T, even more than the 1984-2005 AT&T was.
Re:Full List (Score:2, Informative)
o hai, googel voice is no voip, kthx.
Of those features, what uses significant bandwidth? Sending 140 character text messages over the data network? text transcriptions emailed to you with a link that no one will ever click to hear the actual message? Please try your argument again.
Grandcentral (now Google Voice) are awesome without ANY app on the phone. All the app on the phone does is integrates with your contacts so you don't have to call a special number and/or call a forwarding number first THEN type in your contact's number to call them using your google voice account. It also apparently provides text messaging over the data network instead of the carrier's high priority data channels that SMS uses. So it's actually easier on the network than SMS.
In America, the 'free calls' is actually somewhat of a misnomer. It's a free service domestically, but you still pay for normal phone air time just like for any call, because both sides pay for air time in America (both the caller and the person called). Google Voice doesn't change that, and still goes over the voice network.
Re:AT&T is really AT&T. (Score:2, Informative)
The New ATT [ebaumsworld.com]
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T killed google voice because the "Killer App" that the iPhone has (visual voicemail) is completely, totally, and utterly DESTROYED by it.
If you haven't used google voice, let me explain. Somebody leaves you a voicemail on your GV number. Google does voice recognition on it, and sends you an email of the text. In the email is a little widget that allows you to play the audio.
[...]
The voice recognition of GV is about as good as the handwriting recognition of the original Newton.
Here's what my brother actually said:
Hello, Happy Birthday my brother.
What GV said he said:
Hello, The bird say my brought their.
Fortunately, the audio was available, so I was able to easily hear what he said, but the other GV transcript I got from my wife wasn't much better (the drugstore CVS got turned into "we're going to see me yes").
Google Voice is nice, and I like using it, but don't think it's a miracle app.
Re:Full List (Score:5, Informative)
Which you are paying for. Google Voice IS NOT A VOICE OVER IP APPLICATION. Calls are placed and received over regular phone lines. You are still paying AT&T for the minutes you are using when you receive a call forwarded from your Google Voice number.
Re:Full List (Score:4, Informative)
You are definitely having a brain fart. Google Voice is not a VOIP application. Communication is done on phones via regular phone calls. There's no VOIP component to it. AT&T gets paid because when you place or receive a call via Google Voice, it's a regular phone call and you are using your minutes that you have paid for.
Re:Full List (Score:3, Informative)
That wikipedia article is misleading. Google Voice probably uses VOIP on the back end to tie things together, but it doesn't terminate via VOIP. You have to have a regular phone number for Google Voice to work. There's no way to talk on the computer like with Skype. You can place a call using the Google Voice web site, but all it does is ask you which one of your phones you want it to call. It then rings your phone and when you answer, it calls the other party.
Re:Google Voice Is Incredible (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever clicked on the link labeled "Settings" on the Google Voice page? Down there a ways is a checkbox with the words "Transcribe Voicemails" next to it. Remove the checkmark there, and then click the "Save Settings" button right below it.
Re:Apple Just Admitted To It - Now You Look Foolis (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks for the great link!
There's a lot of BS in that article, but a couple of things which particularly struck me as ridiculous:
disabling it??? GV wouldn't disable anything - Apple's Visual Voicemail would still be there, and if someone called the iPhone directly, it would still work just fine. Nothing's disabled at all!
Hmmm... Google Voice does have a privacy policy [google.com], as I recall....
I think that's pretty clear about how the data will be used.
Re:Google Voice Is Incredible (Score:2, Informative)
Allow me to pull out a legitimate Google Voice transcript. You can get the jist of the message (telemarketing for some after-school/summer program), but it's by no means 100% accurate (I do not have a daughter, the call was obviously a wrong number):
Re:Apple did the right thing. (Score:4, Informative)
I agree. Note that the only reason that OS X is any good at all is because it's a completely different OS (derived from Next), and not descended from the joke that was "classic" MacOS (that only looked good compared to the even worse offerings from MS like DOS). I do find it amusing that after years of Mac fans claiming MacOS was superior back then (whilst I, like you, favoured AmigaOS), Apple themselves turned round and ditched MacOS for something else.
Of course in response they bury their heads in the sand, and insist the new OS is now "MacOS".
I agree about XP (and 2000 is good too). In a similar manner, it's a separate OS line to DOS/Windows 9x, and it's a perfectly fine OS. The irony is that Mac fans still bash Windows XP based on their experiences of Windows 9x ("it crashes all the time!"), despite the fact that if we judged OS X by our experiences of classic MacOS, it'd be a laughing stock ("what's that? You can't even multitask?").