Google Voice pulled from App Store following iOS 5 crash
What once was there now is gone. Earlier today, Google Voice was just two clicks away in the iOS App Store. Now, all that remains is a page cache (at the source link below) and versions of the app that were already installed on iPhones and iPod touches.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google Voice's path onto the iPhone has been a two-year saga of friction with Apple: rejected in 2009, it survived through a browser-based workaround built by VoiceCentral before Apple finally relented and let a native client into the store in September 2010, followed by Google's own official app that November.
Today's removal is different in kind from that earlier fight — this is not a policy dispute but a technical one, with the app crashing under iOS 5 and Apple pulling it from the App Store, leaving only cached listing pages and copies already installed on iPhones and iPod touches.
First-order effects
- New users lose any way to download Google Voice on iOS, while existing installs keep functioning — until those users upgrade to iOS 5, where the confirmed crash makes the app effectively unusable.
Second-order effects
- Google faces pressure to ship a compatibility fix fast or cede ground on a service whose iPhone presence it fought years to secure; every major app developer shipping against the iOS 5 launch faces the same day-one QA gamble.
Third-order effects
- The episode shows the App Store acting as a single point of failure for distribution: a crash on an OS upgrade day can erase an app from the shelf overnight, making platform-gatekeeper review a technical dependency as much as a policy one.
The trend: As mobile operating systems move to annual upgrade cycles, third-party app availability increasingly hinges on developers passing day-one compatibility testing with the platform gatekeeper.