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Why AT&T Killed iPhone Google Voice
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 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.
Apparently, the visual voice mail was a HUGELY expensive undertaking for AT&T. Having somebody offer *the* reason to get an iPhone for *free* is really, really scary to them.
Google offered a superior product for infinitely (as in divide by zero) cheaper. AT&T shat their pants, and blocked it.
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Basically everything you ever wanted that everyone else has failed to provide at a reasonable cost...FOR FREE!
Yes, Comrade!
Whenever I receive a communique from their headquarters, I know I can trust it fully without hesitation or rational thought process. This is the beauty of being inside the One, True Market, where no company has ever lied about their activities before.
Seriously though, if Microsoft released a similar statement, your bullshit detector would have exploded. I don't trust any PR from anyone. Do you think they don't have closed door conversations about destroying competition on an hourly basis? Do you think they're dumb enough to have them on the record?
Apple blocking Google Voice makes buying an iPhone not even a possiblity now that I have had Google Voice for a month or so.
I know many of these features have existed in other products, but that doesn't change the fact that Google Voice has been as big a lifestyle change as getting TiVo for the first time 7 or 8 years ago.
* The voice mail transcripts are my favorite thing. Perfectly accurate so far. Love being able to read voice mails right from my computer
* Free SMS in a GMail like interface
* Everyone now has my Google Number and all my phones are unified behind that single number and I am now completely free to pick up and switch to a new cellphone as the flood of Android phones come out over the next year
No, it's not, and preserving this kind of access is network neutrality's raison d'être. The nightmare scenario is a provider using its clout to hamper access to a company that happens to compete with another line of the provider's business. It is completely unacceptable. Neither Apple nor AT&T has the moral or legal right to use control over one product line to subdue a competitor in another.
Well, what the hell is Apple supposed to do? Allow its competitor to provide the key service of its product: phone calls? That's like Pepsi shipping Coke inside their bottles. Google should promote their service in their own product, not encroach into Apple's turf.