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Comment by waxman | Hacker News Reader

This long-awaited arrival throws quite the wrench into the Android v. iOS platform wars.

Google was obviously already on the iPhone (with search, its popular native app, gmail, etc.), but Google Voice is clearly different in that in competes with the core functions of the phone.

What do you guys think the impact of this will be? Could Google use this as a Trojan horse to hook people on GV then try to upsell them to an Android device with better GV integration? Or will it not matter?

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For an upsell to work, you'd first have to believe that people buy iPhones primarily to make phone calls. Then you'd have to believe that these phone-centric individuals are tolerant of the voice latency in GV calls. I don't see it.

There is no voice lag in GV that I've noticed, I think it works more like call-forwarding than voip.

I'd love to find some rigorous way to measure it, but (as of six months or so ago) when I sat with two phones, held down a button, and waited for a tone to come out the other end, the delay was observably longer with a GV-to-GV call than with a GV-to-cell call, which took longer than cell-to-cell.

I find myself saying "no, go ahead" or talking over the other person far more often with GV than not. It's certainly usable, but I avoid GV if the call quality really matters.

It definitely takes longer for calls to connect and I think it may drop calls more frequently when using it on a cell (although it has improved greatly in that regard from about a year ago). I recently started using it through gmail and have been told the calls sound much better. Not sure what it all means.

In fact there is no VoIP component to Google Voice, except perhaps at the carrier level.

I think its yet another killer Android application that is now available on iPhone. While I can see their logic in this instance I still don't understand why Google insists on porting all of their good Android applications across, removing any competitive advantage they give to Android.

Because Google isn't in the business you think they're in.

So why make Android at all? If Apple removes Google search from the iPhone and disallows AdMob then how are they going to make money from the iPhone?

Google Voice isn't a good example of what I'm talking about (so, I guess that makes this off topic), but take Google Goggles for instance, where is the benefit of them porting that to iPhone? - I'm genuinely interested here. Surely there is more money to be made from people having Android which is loaded with Google, to supporting more sales of iPhone.

Google wants more people to use that Internet more often. That's it. The more users (web, mobile, tv, whatever) the more money they make (in the big picture).

If they can help the carriers get more people using smart phones, they are happy. The android vs. iPhone stuff is just the small battle. The war is Internet use vs. Anything else (jogging? Sex? Swimming? And other activities google can't target with ads)

Yeah I realize their is net benefits there.

Out of interest, I wonder how much money Google actually makes from mobile Safari usage? Ie, if you took away Google search + Admob integration into the iPhone, how much benefit would they still have? (Even worse, replace it with Bing search, so that most searches the user does on their phone see Bings in-search advertisements)

Would be interesting to see the stats on how advertising goes in mobile optimized websites, and just how likely a user is to click on an ad-link while using their phone browser. I know my mobile browsing is either reading stuff, or looking up information I want to see, then getting out, whereas on a PC I'm more likely to wander around the internet earning money for Google.

But what about Google's partners in the Open Handset Alliance? Most of them are definitely trying to compete head-on against the iPhone.

Pawns

Unlike the hapless consumers who would be the pawns, if Google took the (common) strategy of undermining competitors rather than simply producing better products.

> What do you guys think the impact of this will be?

Apple does the majority of its sales outside the US. GV does not work outside the US.

GV sms is free and I use chrome extension quite a bit for sms. Now I would probably cancel my sms plan on iphone.

I think the most important thing is, Google would get contacts this way. I already uploaded my address book removing email ids from the csv file.

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