San Francisco, Calif. The FCC has published an uncensored letter from Google in which the Mountain-View based company claimed that Apple rejected its Voice application. Apple had previously refuted the allegations and insisted that it was “studying” the voice-based app.
“When we submitted our letter on August 21, we asked the FCC to redact certain portions that involved sensitive commercial conversations between two companies – namely, a description of e-mails, telephone conversations, and in-person meetings between executives at Google and Apple,” explained Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel. “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.”
According to Google, Apple rejected its Voice application due to the belief that it “duplicated” and could potentially replace the core dialer functionality of the iPhone.
“The primary points of contact between the two companies were Alan Eustace, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering & Research, and Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing,” stated the letter. “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 application for the reasons described above.”
It should be noted that Club Cupertino adopted a similar line of reasoning with its rejection of Google’s Latitude application.
“Apple’s representatives informed Google that the Latitude application was rejected because Apple believed the application had the potential to: (i): replace the preloaded maps application, (ii), create user confusion since the preloaded maps application on the iPhone is a verson of Google maps, and (iii) offer new featurs not present on the preloaded maps application (which might also contribute to the user confusion referenced above). The Apple representatives indicated that the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality and create user confusion.”
See Also
Apple, AT&T deny Google Voice discrimination
FCC to probe Apple over Google Voice
Apple takes exception to Google Voice
Google Voice comes to Android, Blackberry
