Google Voice Comes to iPhone, Palm Pre

By MIGUEL HELFT
From: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/

The spat that erupted last summer among Google, Apple and AT&T over Google Voice remains unresolved, which means the app for the popular call routing and calling service from Google is still not available on the iPhone.

Google Voice for the iPhone.

But Google is not waiting for a thaw in the frosty standoff. The company is following up on its vow to bring Google Voice to the iPhone “one way or the other,” in the words of Vic Gundotra, the vice president for engineering for mobile apps at Google.

On Tuesday, Google unveiled a spruced-up mobile Web version of Google Voice tailored to the iPhone, as well as the Palm Pre. Vincent Paquet, senior product manager for Google Voice, said the new mobile Web version of the product was as good as the native app, which runs on Android mobile phones.

Of course, iPhone users were always able to point their mobile Web browser to m.google.com/voice to access their Google Voice accounts. But plenty of things didn’t work right. For example, making calls was a two-step process and the outbound caller ID feature didn’t work, meaning that the person receiving the call couldn’t see who was calling, which is one of the more compelling features of Google Voice. Mr. Paquet said that all those problems had been solved, and that the new version of Google Voice also offered free text messaging.

Mr. Paquet said the spat with Apple remained unresolved. “We haven’t heard back from Apple on this,” he said.

In August, Apple told the Federal Communications Commission that it was still pondering Google’s application for Google Voice to run on the iPhone. Quite a bit of finger-pointing ensued, with Apple and Google publicizing their exchanges with the F.C.C.

Mr. Paquet said the decision to improve the mobile Web version of Google Voice for the iPhone — and for any mobile Web browser that understands HTML5 — was not meant as a slap to Apple or AT&T.

“It’s a way to make sure that people who have been asking to use Google Voice on the iPhone have a way to do so,” he said.

And of course, Google is releasing the mobile browser version of Google Voice just in time for it to run smoothly on Apple’s soon-to-be-released tablet computer.