Does Apple fear Google is taking over the iPhone home screen? asks EdibleApple.
With good reason, a lot of people think TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington is a douchebag, but he finally raises an interesting point in an otherwise scathing and elitist post about how Apple’s answer to the FCC’s inquiry over the removal of Google Voice is a bunch of BS:
Multiple sources at Google tell us that in informal discussions with Apple over the last few months Apple expressed dismay at the number of core iPhone apps that are powered by Google. Search, maps, YouTube, and other key popular apps are powered by Google. Other than the browser, Apple has little else to call its own other than the core phone, contacts and calendar features. The Google Voice App takes things one step further, by giving users an incentive to abandon their iPhone phone number and use their Google Voice phone number instead (transcription of voicemails is reason enough alone). Apple was afraid, say our sources, that Google was gaining too much power on the iPhone, and that’s why they rejected the application.
Interesting and entirely plausible.
Apple makes software to sell hardware. From Apple’s perspective, if Google based software apps become the default standard for mobile phones, then the differences between the iPhone and Android-based competitors start to evaporate.
Michael Arrington has a point, here, what he’s saying is plausible, I mean, why not? When I first read about this Google Voice scandal, I thought that Google was going to “punish” Apple by taking back YouTube and Maps from the iPhones. Then I realized that they must have some kind of contracts that links them for a certain number of years.
But the idea of Apple being scared of Google isn’t something we must forget.
