Google & Apple: In Collusion or Cut-Throat Competition?

by on August 1, 2009 · 6 comments

The iPhone-obsessed blogosphere is atwitter about the Apple”s exclusion of the Google voice application from the iPhone app store. On Friday, the FCC sent letters of inquiry to the two companies as well as AT&T.

Whatever one thinks about whether Apple and AT&T should be able to operate their own networks as they see fit, this cat-fight should at least demonstrate the pointlessness of the investigation opened by the FTC in May as to whether Apple and Google are violating the antitrust laws by having two members of their boards of directors in common: Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Genentech CEO Art Levinson. If the two companies were, in fact, trying to collude in an anti-competitive manner, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of it!

Meanwhile, if you don’t like how Apple runs its app store, don’t get an iPhone! If you already have one, you could follow the lead of TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and simply cancel your existing iPhone contract to get a more “open” phone—such as one powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Me, I’m just waiting for Google Voice to offer number portability so I can start using the service without having to change the number I’ve had for the last five years—and plan to take to my ashen grave (somewhere beyond low Earth orbit).

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Berin Szoka / Berin is the founder of TechFreedom. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation and Director of PFF's Center for Internet Freedom. He covers Internet and media policy issues including privacy, advertising, neutrality, cybersecurity, free speech, child safety, and various other efforts to regulate the Net. Berin was elected in 2010 to the Steering Committee of the DC Bar Association's Computer & Telecommunications Law Section. Before joining PFF, he practiced communications, Internet and satellite law as an Associate in the Communications Practice Group at Latham & Watkins LLP. Previously, he practiced at Lawler Metzger, a boutique telecommunications law firm in Washington and clerked for the late Hon. H. Dale Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma. A recognized expert on the legal and regulatory issues associated with space commercialization, Berin is a member of the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC). He is a Director, and former Chairman, of the Space Frontier Foundation, a citizens' advocacy group founded in 1988 and dedicated to opening the space frontier by enabling "NewSpace." He received his Bachelor's degree in economics from Duke University and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Submissions Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology.

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