Probably no other headline grabs our sympathy faster than "Big Bully Beats Up Little Kid." We immediately side with the bully-ee, not the bullier. But every conflict has two sides, and two perspectives.
A few weeks ago, the media reported that Apple had rejected, or was otherwise trying to stall a Google Voice application for the iPhone. The app would let users access their Google Voice accounts, bypassing AT&T for a lot of services, like text messaging. Great deal for users… not so great for AT&T. The story seemed clear-cut: Establishment baddies AT&T and Apple were beating up on power-to-the-people Google. But you know what they say — no matter how flat you make a pancake, there are always two sides.
Google Voice is fantastic. You get one phone number, and it rings a list of numbers for you — your home phone, cellphone, office phone, and even your mama's phone if you want. You can listen to voicemail, or it can transcribe voicemail for you. It isn't a VoIP service that transmits voice over the Internet, instead using the Web to determine where to route your calls through Google's servers, and transmitting voice over the regular telephone network. With VoIP, you can talk all you want over the Internet without using your minutes. With Google Voice, the carrier is simply a "dumb pipe," but you still use your minutes.
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