In recent weeks, Apple turned down two applications that Google had submitted for review in hopes that they would be added to the company’s App Store, highlighting the increasingly complex relationship between the two companies.
Google said in a blog post last week that Apple had rejected an application called Google Latitude that would have allowed users to broadcast their location and see where their friends were.
“We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users,” the company said. It added that Apple had asked it to build a mobile-friendly Web version of the service instead, to “avoid confusion” with the standard map application on the iPhone, which also uses Google map data.
On Tuesday, a Google spokeswoman, Sara Jew-Lim, said that several weeks ago Apple rejected an application that would bring Google Voice service to the iPhone. Ms. Jew-Lim declined to elaborate.
Actually, this whole episode is indicting of proprietary software and secrecy in general. Apple looks bad for trying to protect its exclusive setup with AT&T. And as for Google, how ingenious of them to come up with a product that lets them collect all of your telephone numbers and be in charge of routing all your calls. What’s next? Google SnailMail? Have correspondence sent to Mountain View and Google will scan it and serve it up to you with ads? (This is not such a far fetched concept by the way, there are startups out there that do this: Earth Class Mail and PaperlessMail .) Maybe Google will buy one of them).