It’s interesting to note that most suicide notes are written in desperate attempts to get noticed.

This comes at a perfect time, since only a couple of days ago I posted about my thoughts on Apple, AT&T, Google and Voice. I postulated that AT&T may have actually had nothing to do with the blocking of the app, and that it was simply a row between Apple and Google. As updates became available I later added that not only is the FCC as interested in this as we are, but that AT&T has officially denied any role in the drama.

I also poked fun at the fact that many of the loudest to complain in this case are those who have never actually used Google Voice, and were simply regurgitating hearsay and often bad information when drawing their conclusions. Conclusions which seemed to unanimously point the finger of justice at AT&T.

Which brings me to the core issue: I didn’t expect to be forced to the conclusion that I was, that I would be made to believe that Mike Arrington has not actually used Google Voice on an iPhone, and possibly has not used it at all. Sure, he’s got knowledge of it, he cites his own blog’s posts about it several times, posts which are several months old. He nearly always refers to it as “formerly Grand Central.” That’s all well and good, but it’s not Grand Central anymore. It’s Voice, and the myriad of problems Arrington rails off through the article all seem to be from some alternate reality where I don’t have my iPhone in front of me, with Voice at the ready, proving him wrong at every turn.

I think the best way to handle this is to simply go paragraph by paragraph in excerpts from his post.

What finally put me over the edge? It wasn’t the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I’ve lived with that for two years. It’s not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I’ve lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn’t the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle.

Most of you won’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain.

Yes Mike, AT&T has spotty coverage at best, and we all hate dropped calls. The grass is always greener though, isn’t it? Because last time I checked, customers of other wireless service providers were complaining about the same thing. But that’s not what I want to point out in this excerpt, the last line is: “Most of you won’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain.” Really? Well thanks Mike Arrington, because I was sitting here completely befuddled by the moonspeak you were spewing. Please, go on.

Google Voice is a call management service that lets you determine what calls get through to you based on who’s calling and what time of day it is, among other factors. It has amazing features, like automatically transcribing all your voicemails. And you can forward calls to any other phone easily and automatically. Here’s an overview of the service if you aren’t familiar with it.

What I want to note here is that the article he links to supposedly explaining to us simpletons what exactly Google Voice is, is in fact from back in March.

This is what we’ve really been waiting for:

I’ve always wanted to use Google Voice but there’s a big switching cost – changing your phone number. Too many people have that phone number and use it to call in great stories. There’s no way I’m giving that up. And there’s another problem with Google Voice. When you make outbound calls from a phone, it (obviously) doesn’t use your Google Voice phone number, so recipients don’t know it’s you calling. Those were two hurdles I wasn’t willing to jump over.

There it is. “I’ve always wanted to use Google Voice but… …hurdles I wasn’t willing to jump over.” Wow. He’s just basically admitted that he is speaking entirely out of his ass. And these unavoidable “hurdles” he names? Not so much. I think it’s nothing short of amazing that the great Mike Arrington is willing to bestow such “obvious” knowledge upon us. Especially since it’s completely wrong.

When you set up your Voice account, you choose a phone number. This will be your Google Voice number for as long as you choose to keep it. It does not replace the phone number attached to your iPhone, that’s AT&T. Your friends who have this number saved will still have the number saved, and will still see your face when they dial it. If you want them to start using your new Google Voice number, you simply give them the number and tell them so whenever they call you. What a hurdle!

As for the second revelation, that when making outgoing calls your phone “(obviously) doesn’t use your Google Voice phone number” (and that your friends will have no idea who is calling if you should try it): This is absolutely ridiculous. All I have to do in order to make an outgoing call is to hit a contact’s name or enter a number to dial in the web-app furnished by Google. I am called by my own Google Voice number, I answer, and the system connects me to the party I’ve dialed. They see my Google Voice number in their caller ID, just like normal. All the Google Voice features are enabled, they work by touchtone during the call, you still have a dialer and a finger. It’s really no different than any other call once you get past the act of not initiating it with the dialer.

He doesn’t stop there, he actually continues, striding boldly forward into oblivious serenity, laying down his sage learnings cooly and methodically:

But now Google is planning on rolling out number portability, so I can move my mobile phone number to Google. None of my friends, family or contacts have to store a new number.

That still leaves the problem of outbound calls, though. I can move my mobile number to Google and then get a new iPhone account, but outbound calls won’t be identified because they are on the new number. Google has a solution for that too, though. They are releasing apps for a variety of handsets that effectively take over the native dialer, address book and call log. Problem solved. I can use any phone I like, or a bunch of phones, and just choose the one that makes sense at any time. I never have to be tied to a carrier and their restrictive contracts again.

Or so I thought. Apple and AT&T are now blocking the iPhone version of the Google Voice app. Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing – moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google.

Where do I begin? I’ve already covered his being obsessively wrong about the outgoing calls business, so that’s done. In doing so I’ve now covered the use of the web-app, so that’s taken care of. Earlier in my last post I covered the issue of AT&T’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the blocking of the native Voice app, something which Arrington believes he can simply state as fact (as he does everything else). So all that’s left is his plaintive cry for help, because he’s been so unreasonably forced to choose between his iPhone and Google.

Don’t misunderstand me, if there were ever an actual moment that truly did force such a decision, I would choose Google over my iPhone. Mike Arrington has not been forced, in any way whatsoever to make this choice. Mike Arrington has shown that he has no idea what he’s talking about, and that he simply wants attention. In this case, he probably expects to get a free iPhone 3GS from Apple, because he probably believes he has that kind of clout. He very well may. Too many people have placed laurels on the head of this man, and the combined weight of all that crowning glory seems to have caused a severe over-inflation of his ego. My suggestion to Mr. Arrington is this: If setting up and using Google Voice is too much of a hassle for you, maybe you should indeed put down the iPhone. While you’re at it, give the people at JitterBug a try, they might be more your speed.

Addendum: The Wall Street Journal doesn’t seem to have a clue what Google Voice is, either.

I think people tend to forget that AT&T is not the only carrier that Apple deals with, and that the US isn’t the only country in which the iPhone is sold. AT&T has always played second chair to Apple in the deal, and Google Voice has absolutely zero significant threats to wireless carriers hidden within it. Many of the rants floating around are written by people who don’t even have a Google Voice account yet, and seem to be basing conjecture on more conjecture, while piling rumor on top of that. The fact is that there are no facts, because nobody ruffling feathers about this mess are the people who know what’s going on. That would be the execs at Apple.

[UPDATE]: The FCC is very interested in knowing, too.

[UPDATE]: AT&T has stated they were not involved in the decision.

You are still able to use Google Voice on your iPhone. I have it, and I use it, all with a web-app. It’s not that bad, really.

If there has been any truly informative insight into just what is going on between the three industry giants, it would be the deleted tweet that came from the hand of Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search at Google. In it, she linked to a satirical (and hilarious) news article posted at BBspot, which told a story of Google turning the tables on Apple and removing them from their search index. The reasons given were meant to mirror Apple’s statement on deciding to block Google Voice’s native iPhone app, as well as Latitude’s.

While the article is purely satire, there was one particular bit of truth buried within it that many people are overlooking: The Google Voice application is still available for Blackberry and Android phones. This fact alone, considering iPhones in no way make up the majority of AT&T’s phone market, goes to show how flawed the argument is that AT&T is responsible for the block.

Why Google Voice is not such a threat to AT&T:

I’m going to use my own experience as a guide here, I know that’s not usually preferable, but in this case I seem to be one of few who actually use the service I’m blogging about.

• Texting: When I receive a text, I still receive the text, otherwise, I’d never know anyone texted me. It still counts against me come billing time. There are no less than 41 billion SMS and MMS texting apps available on the Appstore at any given time. Many of them have the ability to send text messages as data, but just like with Google Voice, the phone gets alerted via text upon receipt. Nothing new here.
• Calls: The way phone calls work on Google Voice is that you are connected through your Voice number, which means you are still connecting via your wireless connection to an actual phone number. Google Voice is not a VOIP service, and doesn’t even have the option while on a computer. It’s a number mask, a relay, a switchboard, a log and a transcription service. It’s not Skype.
• Long Distance Calls: I don’t know about the rest of you, but my AT&T account comes with free long distance calling, and it’s the cheapest account available. International rates are cut-cost with Google Voice, but there are already countless services set up for relay-calling international numbers at low rates, so this is not new.

What is new here is the fact that if Voice were given its own native app on the iPhone, then the two components of the device that make it a phone would suddenly be replaced with Google software. This wouldn’t affect AT&T much, but it would certainly upset Apple, whose software is being replaced. Right now, in order to use Voice, I basically have Safari open all the time, which isn’t a hassle since it already is anyway, due to GMail’s web-app being nicer than my phone’s onboard mail handler. That alone is a big hint. If a Google user like myself finds a simple web-app more useful than Apple’s software, then just how hard would it be for me to replace the Phone and Text buttons with a single GVoice icon should there be an actual app available?

The answer to that is that it’d be very easy, since that functionality is built into the phone. In fact, I’ve gone ahead and replaced the icons anyway, with home-screen Safari bookmarks for Google Voice and GMail. I don’t make any outgoing calls using the phone’s dialer, I simply dial out from the contact lists in my Voice web-app. Those contact lists are constantly sync’d with my GMail contact lists, which in turn are sync’d to my phone’s address book which in turn sync’s my Mac’s address book every time I plug my phone in. The system is pretty streamlined, and it’s nearly completely Google-driven except for, believe or not, a Microsoft Exchange service going on in there, but that shows how Google remains non-biased in their workarounds to get a product to the user. Since “the user” happens to be “Me” that makes me happy.

I strongly suggest that you actually try Google Voice before you believe anything someone else has written about it, including myself. As with any other service, it’s going to come down to personal preference in the end. I love it. I think it’s worth the slightly extra bit of work I go through to make phone calls or send text messages. But that’s me, I also like my freedom to use it, and admire Google for planning ahead and supplying me with a web-app the way they have. This stuff is free and they’re going great lengths to make sure it’s available. And after everything is laid out on the table, with Latitude’s absolutely senseless app-murder, it just doesn’t make sense to place the blame on AT&T anymore.

This looks like a simple case of lovers’ quarrel.