Those with good memories may recall the Apple/AT&T/Google fiasco of a couple months ago that stirred the FCC to action, sending formal questionnaires to all three companies regarding their roles in the rejection of official and unofficial Google Voice applications, their companies’ roles in the marketplace, the state of VOIP applications, and more. Today, the FCC and Google released the full text of Google’s response, which contradicts Apple’s stated response.

As many noted at the time, Google’s responses were carefully and curiously redacted as released, in particular the entire section of their response regarding why Google Voice was rejected from the App Store.

Apple’s original statement in response to Question 1:

“Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.”

Google’s original response, given at the same time, states:

“The primary points of contact between the two companies were Alan Eustace, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research, and Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing. On July 7, Mr. Eustace and Mr. Schiller spoke over the phone.”

“It was during this call that Mr. Schiller informed Mr. Eustace that Apple was rejecting the Google Voice application for the reasons described above in 2(a).”

Google’s section 2(a) states:

“Apple’s representatives informed Google that the Google Voice application was rejected because Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone. The Apple representatives indicated that the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality.”

Interestingly, section 2(b) elaborates (PDF) on why Google Latitude was rejected from the App Store:

“Apple’s representatives informed Google that the Google Latitude application was rejected because Apple believed the application had the potential to: (i) replace the preloaded maps application, (ii) create user confusion since the preloaded maps application on the iPhone is a version of Google Maps, and (iii) offer new features not present on the preloaded maps application (which might also contribute to the user confusion referenced above).”

So not only are you barred from making an app that duplicates functionality, you can’t make an app that enhances functionality. Now that’s an ecosystem developers can rally behind!

While the discrepancies are certainly interesting, we remain without concrete answers until the FCC has completed its ongoing investigation.

At least everybody says AT&T had no say in the application rejection process.