Apple blocking Google Voice blocking webOS App | Hacker News Reader

Apple blocking Google Voice blocking webOS App

flpalmdev.blogspot.com

He is comparing Google not providing an API to AT&T redirecting google.com to bing.com or apple blocking the voice app? Lost his argument, right there.

Wish he provided more technical details instead of just just ranting. What is the "uper easy access number" and whats with the headline ?

I understand he is frustrated but he is trying to reverse engineer a product. It is rarely easy. And since google voice has a mobile version, it is not even that webOS users are locked out.

I'm not sure I get the complaint. It's Google's service, it's never been free software, and clearly they're going to exert some control over what clients get to connect. That's clearly within Google's power and rights to do, and it doesn't hurt anyone but competing voice app vendors who want to use Google's (!) service.

How does that compare to banning a Google Voice app from the iPhone store, which while also within Apple's power and rights, is clearly harming consumers who don't get to use the service?

I'm not sure I get the complaint. It's Apple's operating system, it's never been free software, and clearly they're going to exert some control over what apps get installed. That's clearly within Apple's power and rights to do, and it doesn't hurt anyone but competing app vendors who want to use Apple's (!) operating system.

How does that compare to banning a WebOS app from the accessing the Google Voice service, which while also within Google's power and rights, is clearly harming consumers who don't get to use the service?

You're being amusingly snide, but just plain wrong, sorry. Blocking Google Voice at the app store quite clearly prevents iPhone users from using Google Voice, a service Google wants to provide to them. But for a third party (Apple) those users would be able to use it, so without it they are harmed.

Google doesn't want to provide/support service to WebOS, or other third party clients. These users wouldn't be served anyway, they aren't "harmed" except by reference to a utopian world where we all run free software all the time. It's like demanding that Apple support iTunes on the Linux or Palm Pre; it's a ridiculous argument.

If all they were doing was not supporting third party clients or failing to provide an API, I would agree with you. However, from the article:

> ...they are implementing byzantine security to actually prevent 3rd party apps from accessing the same functionality that their Android native app is capable of or their new mobile site is able to access.

There's a big difference between failing to support and actively creating obstacles to use. Seems like Apple and Google are both equally guilty of this, to the detriment of end users.

Actually, the situation is identical to Apple, if not worse. gDial worked just fine until recently, when Google pulled the rug out from under the developer.

As a gDial Pro user, I feel very much harmed because my app worked great and then suddenly it was broken. Google is within their rights, but they're still behaving badly.

> I'm not sure I get the complaint. It's Apple's operating system, it's never been free software, and clearly they're going to exert some control over what apps get installed. That's clearly within Apple's power and rights to do, and it doesn't hurt anyone but competing app vendors who want to use Apple's (!) operating system.

No, it's the user's phone, and clearly _they_ should exert control over what apps get installed. After sale, what gives apple the moral right to tell the owner of the device that they can't install google voice?

On the other hand, the APIs gvoice exposes run on Google's hardware, using their resources, and their trunk lines. Google has every right to limit use of their equipment.

This is the problem with "don't be evil". Evil all depends on your point of view.

Google probably views the iPhone as evil given its closed nature, and thus Android is their attempt to save humanity from Steve's evil clutches. Thus anything they do to facilitate that, including closing off their own products, is morally justified.

This seems to contradict Sean Kovacs' (the developer of GV Mobile) post at the release of the Google Voice mobile web app:

http://www.seankovacs.com/index.php/2010/01/im-in-love/

I don't know from personal experience, as I haven't tried to do any of this myself. Also, Kovacs' post was from a month ago, so something may have changed.

That is why developer is complaining. Using that used to work but does not anymore, possibly because of security protocols.

Also it seems like Google is using a secret api in the Android app. Why not just slap the tag 'Beta' on the api and publish it? It may suck when an api changes but at least it is in the developer's control to get his app working again.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification.

I totally agree with the beta api idea.

Google probably wants to ensure that Android phones have the best GV integration. At some point, as we saw with Buzz, Google will start leveraging other popular services to compete. It's inevitable. Google Voice can be a killer app and could sell a ton of first party Google phones.

I agree with the sentiment in this blog post, but I can't help but wonder if regulations on telecommunications services require Google to implement the extra security.

If you are involved in advertising, marketing, and branding at all, you begin to realize that advertising is really taking all the weaknesses of a product and making them strength of the product.

So, with Google, the engineers realize that it is impossible for a company with that much power and investment capital involved to avoid evilness, thus, they take the opposite of the company and make it the slogan, thus an evil company becomes a company with slogan of "do no evil."

This is kind of ridiculous. The "don't be evil" slogan originated in 2001 supposedly, when Google had $7 million in profit and very few employees. They were hardly a powerhouse, although things looked very promising at that point.

The founders of Google were visionaries who understood the humanity involved in any large organization. The very slogan was introduced to help them remember not to do bad things when they get big. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that well.

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