Chicky Moves

Apple’s latest move to ban Google voice has not gone well with FCC and users. While users are hot happy with this ban, FCC sees this as an anti competitive move “conspired” by Apple and AT&T. The conspiracy theory doing rounds in the web community elaborates on how Google VOIP and telephony product collides with interest of Apple and AT&T, its mobile carrier.  Apple, who has long guarded the application business notified Google of application’s duplicating features, AT&T doesn’t perceived it positively either as it offers free SMS and cheap international calls.

FCC fears that these actions might act as trigger for increased competition between mobile career and device makers despite its attempts to keep mobile web open and consumer friendly like internet. FCC has notified Apple, AT&T and Google seeking information about why this application has been rejected that lets people make free calls.

Apple who has consistently guarded its business has been charges with similar moves against other players as well. Earlier VoiceCentral and GV mobile applications which offered similar features were banned for their “duplicating” features. On July 23rd Google launched its iPhone version of Google latitude. But later after complains from Apple, it had to rewrite it as a web application as against an independent application.

In past, Apple has also been charged with other anti competitive moves like banning other browsers on iPhone. Its application store is notoriously insulting for application builders, and its iTune ecosystem has stubbornly rejected all other MP3 formats at one point of time and thus killing innovation in MP3 players. Application developers are so annoyed with Apple app store that they now have an unauthorized iPhone application store called Cydia from where you can download free application that were banned by Apple. For using these application, iPhone users need to jailbreak their iPhone by using a hack which help them bypass the imposed restriction.