Redacted?!?
August 22nd, 2009Apple says: we haven’t rejected it. AT&T says: we had no say in it. Google says: [redacted].
What? Are you kidding me? This, my friends, is what the old folks call smoke and mirrors. Google needs to speak up quickly and explain that redaction.
Here’s the problem: let’s say, hypothetically, that the FCC takes action based on these letters. We the public wouldn’t know all pertinent facts that resulted in such action. We would have no way to critique their judgement. But it’s our FCC. We own it, we have a right to know.
This whole thing stinks, badly. Big companies fighting big games over consumer territory. That’s bad enough, but now one of the parties would have the federal government as leverage in their favor. And they want to do it behind a veil of secrecy. Not good.
The FCC needs to stay away and let this sort itself out in the marketplace. And Google needs to speak up.
UPDATE: Google has since un-redacted the missing pages. Props to them for doing the right thing.
August 22nd, 2009 at 11:07 am
Link to the story you’re talking about? Sadly, “corporations being douchebags” doesn’t narrow it down.
August 22nd, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I’d agree, the whole thing stinks.
On one hand, I sortof agree with Apple in that it alters the way voicemail and sms work. But only if you can turn a blind eye to the fact that it is a different phone number than your iPhone number, and that voicemail and sms continue to work unchanged. It’s just that contacts might cease to use the iPhone number in favor of the gVoice number. There aren’t any hacks of the iPhone native apps in any way.
What I think it’ll come down to is wether or not the iPhone is considered a “product” or is considered a computer. If it’s a general-purpose computer, then Apple will need to back down. They obviously can’t restrict applications in OS X, and probably shouldn’t be on the iPhone either.