A little behind the times, but here’s the update on the Google Voice story. Apple and Google both responded to the FCC’s letter; Apple’s reply is here and Google’s is here.

So what did we learn? On the upside, we learned a lot about the approval processes for both the iPhone and Android phones; more on that in another post. On the downside, we didn’t learn much about why Apple rejected Google Voice. Apple said they hadn’t rejected it at all and that they were “continuing to study the Google Voice application and its potential impact on the iPhone user experience.” They added that they sometimes consult with AT&T about whether to accept apps, but didn’t in this case. Apple went on to worry about Google Voice based on such minutiae as whether users would still access their voice mail through the voice mail menu provided by touching the “phone” icon. Even if it’s true—which can be debated—that sort of worry seems both silly and patronizing to me. I understand that design is very important to Apple, but users want to download Google Voice, is it sensible for Apple to decide that the pre-determined user interface is more important? It comes back to what Steve Jobs said in an interview before the iPhone had even launched: “We define everything that is on the phone.” Should they?

Google originally asked the FCC to redact the parts of its letter relating to the rejection process. In a recent about-face, though, they withdrew that request and the FCC posted the full reply. Google says that Apple did reject the app, based on worries that it would duplicate iPhone functionality or confuse users. (An Apple spokesperson has registered disagreement with Google’s letter.)

Before Google issued the full letter, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch ripped apart Apple’s answers and did some advanced theorizing about what’s really going on here. His belief is that Apple was afraid that Google was subtly but surely taking over the iPhone user experience. “Search, maps, YouTube, and other key popular apps are powered by Google.” In other words, Google doesn’t just have apps competing with thousands of others in the store, but core apps that the average user relies on regularly. Apple’s claim to “define everything that’s on the phone” begins to ring hollow as Google takes over one function after another. If users stopped relying on even the phone part of the iPhone, Arrington’s theory goes, how much control down Apple retain over its product? Does Google start to have enough leverage to force changes that Apple disagrees with?

It’s a very interesting theory, one that I don’t know enough to evaluate fully, but that seems to accord with Google’s unredacted letter. (The iPhoneBlog takes another look at the idea here.) Worth noting, though, is how similar this is to the issues with cloud computing and PCs. Apple—or Dell, HP, etc—may control the hardware, but Google is making a big play for everything else. Just as a user could one day buy a PC that would boot straight to the Chrome browser, where the user’s documents are waiting in the cloud, a user could image turning on an iPhone, making calls on their Google Voice account, and doing all their work through Google apps.

What this means from a consumer or regulator perspective is that we have to take a wide view of potential sources of problems and blockage. Forcing Apple to make its app approval process perfectly transparent isn’t enough if Google has taken over much of the computing. If a smartphone equivalent to cloud computing takes off, all the worries we have in the PC context will have to be investigated here.

For those who believe in regulation, the FCC’s letter here was a good start, but only the beginning of a very long process. For those against regulation, this might be a prime example of a situation changing too complex and fast-changing to be amenable to FCC guidance.

—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer