Apple pips Google iPhone app?

In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches bloggers watch Google watch Apple not push a much-anticipated new iPhone app. Not to mention the BSOM...

Seth Weintraub updates us:

Google today unleashed its improved Google iPhone app to the press and supposedly to Apple. But it hasn't yet hit the Apple store. What gives?
...
Google's iPhone app would take user speech, send it as a sound file to Google's servers. Google's servers would run speech recognition on it, send the words back to the phone which would do a Google search on it ... the functionality would be invoked by holding the iPhone up to an ear. Apple's accelerometers would tell the application when to start recording.
...
Is something up with Apple not wanting its users to have this functionality?

Michael Arrington has sources:

Google’s voice recognition search application for the iPhone ... will likely go live sometime Monday, we’ve heard ... Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday. One source says they’ve had little direct contact with Apple during the review.
...
Who knows why Apple delayed the application, or why they tend to treat every application developer equally poorly ... But in this case Apple really screwed up in our opinion ... This application will, quite simply, sell iPhones. Lots of them.

John Biggs can haz simyly:

All mention has been scoured from Google’s website, Soviet-style. Not a good sign.
...
Clearly the rumors that Apple is planning a search system are true and this tread too closely to Apple’s turf. But why not just say it? Why all the skulking? Could Apple be taking a page from Stalin’s playbook? The “hushing up inconvenient news” page, not the “purge of millions of intelligentsia page,” obviously.

David Fields plows on: [You're fired -Ed.]

While it is still unclear why Apple had delayed the application’s launch, the fault does appear to lie in their court.

The interesting part of this whole situation is that Google had chosen to unveil the application on the iPhone platform, instead of on their own Android platform, which may have driven more sales of Android powered devices. Deciding to support the popularity of the iPhone and its massive user base should have been received with a little more attention from Apple to reciprocate the action..

Brett Terpstra peers under the hood:

The voice recordings from the application will be sent to Google's servers for processing "in the cloud." Given the size of Google's infrastructure and its ability to transfer gargantuan amounts of data, it may have the advantage over existing voice-driven search apps such as Yahoo's oneSearch.

Google execs seem hesitant to quantify the accuracy of the voice recognition software, but here's hoping it at least tops some of the iPhone voice-dialers I've been playing with.

But where's the Trek angle? Sean Percival beams down:

Whats going on with the much anticipated update to the Google Mobile App? The latest update was to bring voice based searching to the iPhone, a very cool and Star Trek like enhancement. I’ve long said the iPhone is the first incarnation of a “pad” like device seen throughout the beloved trek franchises. Voice being the key missing element to this already hyper connected device.

And finally...

• The Matrix runs on Windows

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Uh, Windows Live is a social network now?
• McColo is McShut McDown
• The iPhone eyes ubiquity