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FCC steps in to investigate Apple, AT&T over Google Voice app rejection

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  • FCC steps in to investigate Apple, AT&T over Google Voice app rejection

    It's about time...

    CNET is the world's leader in tech product reviews, news, prices, videos, forums, how-tos and more.


    Report: FCC inquires into Apple, AT&T rejection of Google Voice app

    Already having raised the ire of some developers and customers, the decision to disallow the Google Voice application on Apple's App Store has also attracted the attention of the FCC.

    According to a Dow Jones Newswire report, on Friday afternoon the FCC sent letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google. The federal inquiry asks Apple why the Google Voice application was rejected from its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and why it removed third-party applications built on the Google app that had been previously approved. The federal commission also asks whether AT&T was allowed to weigh in on the application before it was rejected, and seeks a description of the application from its creator, Google, according to the report. There have been no complaints filed with the FCC about Apple's rejection of Google Voice, so it's not a formal investigation.

    Apple did not immediately return a request for comment.

    Google Voice is a free application that lets users assign a single number to ring their home, work, and cell phones, and also get voice mail as text transcriptions. Google Voice has been described by some as an "end run" around wireless carriers because it allows for free texts and cheap international calling, but users do still use minutes on their AT&T phone plan.

    The letters are apparently part of a broader look at exclusivity contracts between phone manufacturers and wireless carriers. AT&T, for example, is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S.

    Following the announcement by Google that its application was rejected by Apple earlier this week, some developers, customers, and even a prominent blogger said Apple's decision would cause them to stop using their iPhones, or stop developing for the platform.
    "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
    Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

  • #2
    Hmmm, no complaint and yet an investigation is launched.
    Now, a mysterous news story about the investigation appears in the press.
    Does anyone else feel the presence of Google minions, acting behind the scenes?

    Comment


    • #3
      The letters are apparently part of a broader look at exclusivity contracts between phone manufacturers and wireless carriers. AT&T, for example, is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S.
      Sure, Apple is evil but then again, so is Microsoft.

      What else is new!
      "An archaeologist is the best husband a women can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her." - Agatha Christie
      "Non mortem timemus, sed cogitationem mortis." - Seneca

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Zkribbler View Post
        Hmmm, no complaint and yet an investigation is launched.
        Now, a mysterous news story about the investigation appears in the press.
        Does anyone else feel the presence of Google minions, acting behind the scenes?
        To be fair, there have been rumblings that the new Administration is interested in looking at phone exclusivity contracts and the such on the basis of anti-trust. So, this seems part and parcel of that.
        “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
        - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

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        • #5
          For some reason, I have the feeling that Google can defend itself.

          Google Voice
          I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

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          • #6
            Dear Apple & ATT,

            Please allow Big Brother's flagship in the front door.


            Signed,

            FCC

            Comment


            • #7
              lol
              Lysistrata: It comes down to this: Only we women can save Greece.
              Kalonike: Only we women? Poor Greece!

              Comment


              • #8
                Google sucks. Buy Apple stock instead.
                Libraries are state sanctioned, so they're technically engaged in privateering. - Felch
                I thought we're trying to have a serious discussion? It says serious in the thread title!- Al. B. Sure

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                • #9
                  If no laws have been broken, the FCC needs to stay out.
                  No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Um... isn't the FCC trying to find out if a law has been broken?
                    “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                    - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Google CEO resigns from Apples Board:

                      LINK
                      What happens when the enemy of your enemy is no longer your friend? You cast him out, as Steve Jobs seems to have done to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who today resigned his seat from Apple's board. An alliance which began with a mutual distrust of Microsoft is now under strain because of a mutual distrust of each other. Google is not so much the enemy of Microsoft as it is the enemy of the old model of device-centric computing which both Microsoft and Apple represent.

                      The announcement comes on the heels of an FCC investigation into Apple's iPhone App Store that was announced on Friday evening. The subject of that investigation is nominally the rejection of a Google app, Google Voice, from the App Store, but it is really an investigation into the closed and arbitrary nature of how apps get approved for the iPhone.

                      In other words, Google brought down the disapproving scrutiny of the FCC onto Apple on Friday night, and on Monday morning Schmidt resigned. It is difficult not to make a connection between these two events. The FCC investigation, of course, is never mentioned in the press release (that would only invite more pesky questions from the FCC). Instead, what Steve Jobs does say in the press release is that Google's entry into mobile operating systems with Android and desktop operating systems with Chrome OS is increasingly becoming a "conflict of interest" for Schmidt. As a result, Schmidt had to go. It also says that both executives "mutually decided" it was time for Schmidt to resign. (I can only imagine how that conversation went. Jobs: "You are going to have to resign." Schmidt: "Okay, but can I say it was my idea?")

                      Regardless of how the resignation came about (maybe it was the other way around with Schmidt telling Jobs that the two companies were increasingly coming at odds with each other), what made the two men come to grips with reality all of a sudden? If nothing else, last Friday's letters from the FCC was a wake-up call to Apple that Google stands on the opposite side of the fence when it comes to the evolution of the mobile Web. Google wants the mobile Web to as open as the Internet. It's entire mobile strategy is predicated on open access for all apps, devices, and services because that creates a larger, more vibrant, and more searchable mobile Web.

                      Apple is not about being open. It never has been. Every app on the iPhone (all 50,000 of them) must be approved individually, for instance. This difference in approach wasn't a problem until Google started to have mobile aspirations of its own. Asked to choose between furthering Apple's mobile agenda or Google's, Schmidt must choose Google's. It is his fiduciary duty. That conflict is only going to grow. And that is perhaps why Jobs says his "effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished."

                      Schmidt had to go. Not just because of the dust-up with the FCC and the Google Voice app. But because Google has a different set of agendas which already are putting strains on the relationship. Google wants to diminish the importance of any single computing device in favor of Web apps which sit in the cloud and are accessible from all devices?mobile phones, Macbooks, Dell laptops, or whatever. As much as is physically possible, it wants to replace the operating system with the Web.

                      Ultimately, that is a bigger threat to Apple than Microsoft ever was.
                      Monkey!!!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        It's more like the FCC looking to invent a law to be broken. As the article says, no complaints were filed by any of the parties.
                        No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          So laws can only be broken if complaints are filed?

                          If there seems to be smoke that a company is violating FCC laws, the FCC investigating it isn't exactly "looking to invent a law".

                          Most of the investigations I go on with the Department of Labor aren't due to complaints, but tax filings that may indicate a violation of the laws we enforce.
                          “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                          - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Laws are only broken if there's a cop to bust you or a prosecutor who can prove it.
                            To us, it is the BEAST.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Funky tax filings constitute probable cause. Looking at a tiff between companies that aren't playing nice dosen't. Also, why is the FCC doing this, and not the DoJ?
                              No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.

                              Comment

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