Apple may have blocked the Google Voice internet telephony app from its App Store, but Google has executed a nifty end-run around the blockade by releasing Google Voice as a web page that is accessible by any HTML5 web browser. Simply direct your iPhone or Palm Pre to google.com/voice to make calls from your Google Voice account (Android and Blackberry owners can just keep using their native Google Voice apps).
Like other mobile web apps, Google Voice can be installed as a bookmark on the iPhone's home screen so that it feels more like a native app.
Our Top 7 Disruptions of 2009 included both the Google Stack and HTML5 mobile apps, putting this development squarely in the cross hairs of two important trends. In Apple’s ultimate nightmare scenario, its rejection of Google Voice could come back to haunt it, should history look back on this moment as when the scale tipped away from Apple’s App Store model and towards HTML5 apps that duplicate the functionality of downloadable apps without requiring custom development for each smartphone platform.
Indeed, the ability to add a web page to one of the iPhone’s home screens — proprietary Google Voice icon and all — creates a user experience that is nearly identical to using apps which run off the OS rather than the cloud, and presents differences that almost nobody who uses it will really care about.
Yeah, I don't get Apple anywhere near as much as I thought I would back when I was a Windows user. Who cares if the Google Voice app replaces core functions of the phone, anyway? The app is still bought from the App store and it's still run on an iPhone. Aren't those two things all that matters?
Hm, lessee, Google has phones and netbooks on the way. Maybe Google is starting with small and growing larger and larger until they can jump past Apple and aim for the big guy, M$?
No comments:
Post a Comment