iPhone App Causes Google To Shut Down SMS Service

An anonymous reader writes "A few days ago, Inner Fence released a paid iPhone app called Infinite SMS, which let iPhone users employ Google's free SMS gateway to send SMS messages without paying their service providers. The resulting surge in traffic on Google's SMS gateway forced Google to block all third-party applications from using the free SMS feature — including Google's own GTalk client."

Comments

Re:TANSTASFL

[iamflimflam1]

So they were in the top 10 paid apps for 11 days. According to here if you are in the top 15 paid apps you'll be selling at least 2836 units a day. According to my maths, after Apple has taken their cut they'll have made about $20K Not bad...

Re:Next target: AOL?

[MichaelSmith]

Google haven't closed the service. They have just blocked third party apps from using it. AOL might just do that if a different client starts using this to send messages.

I know somebody who set up an SMS spamming company in about 2000. He was always on the lookout for ways to send tens of thousands of SMS messages for free.

Re:kenneth

[krunk4ever]

You just mashed together a bunch of unrelated statements and even made up some of your own.

rupesh (article author) stated, "Google's hardly publicized method for sending free text messages has been revoked ..."

Google stated, "SMS chat is still just an experiment in the early testing stages in Gmail Labs."

Nowhere did anyone state they wanted to "test it with limited numbers of users"

Do note that "hardly publicized method" still means a public API, which I would guess is intended for others to use.

What happened here is just that Google wasn't expecting such a huge surge in usage and had no other choice to disable for 3rd party clients for now. If they can figure out a way they can support it, they would most likely re-enable this service for 3rd parties.

Re:Alll's Well that ended well.

[horza]

Today's 2000-era generation thinks it's perfectly okay to tap into their neighbor's wireless internet, even though it's costing their neighbor extra money.

It does?

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, a period where people were fed up of getting ripped off by telecoms companies. The cost of switching had dropped to fractions of the cost, yet the cost of calls kept getting higher. We were fleeced making international calls whilst the telecoms companies raked in billions. We paid through the nose for Internet access over slow modems. The monopoly deliberately held back cheap broadband in the form of ADSL as they didn't want to cannibalise their rip-off ISDN service. SMS was added as an after-thought to GSM and used to be free for everybody via numerous gateways. I used to have it so people could message my mobile via my web site. Then once the big mobile operators saw a cash cow they blocked the free operators by creating a cartel and charging an inter-operator penalty. The digital revolution is starting to open a few holes in the old monopolies and good thing too. The resentment, much like with the record industry and their restrictive practices, are coming back to bite them.

It's the "you don't have an entitlement" generation, and it's going out to the telecoms companies, the RIAA, Microsoft, large drugs companies, foreign oil powers, and anybody else that things they have a license to print money whilst sitting on their asses and doing very little.

Phillip.