Google Voice App Coming to the iPhone

Surprise! Apple has approved the official Google Voice app for the iPhone after more than a year of deliberations, according to a report in Techcrunch. If you're one of the many stuck in the center of the Apple-Google Venn diagram, this should make your life a little bit easier. And perhaps it suggests a slightly different attitude about app approvals emanating from Cupertino.

We've gotten word that the official Google Voice application is on its way to the iPhone in the next few weeks. In fact, we've heard from a source close to Google that it's already been approved -- Google just needs to revamp the application to work with the iPhone 4 and iOS's multitasking capabilities. If you're a Google Voice user and you're on an iPhone, this is great news.

It's been a long, long road to get here. Last July, we broke the news that Apple had blocked the official Google Voice application, which eventually sparked an FCC inquiry into the matter. Apple claimed that the application "duplicated existing functionality", which didn't do much to convince anyone as it subsequently accepted similar apps. Nothing happened for well over a year, and the odds of Google Voice ever making its way to the iPhone, at least as a native application, seemed bleak.

Everything changed on September 9, when Apple published a set of guidelines telling developers which applications would not be allowed into the App Store -- and none of the rules seemed to apply to Google Voice.

Read the full story at Techcrunch.