Google's iPhone and SMS Apps Are No-ShowsGoogle's iPhone and SMS Apps Are No-Shows

iPhone users excited about Google's new voice-powered search application may have noticed that it never appeared in the iPhone Apps Store over the weekend. As of 9 AM today, it still wasn't there. Also missing in action is that chat-based SMS feature that Google promised would be added to Gmail. What gives, Google?Reports have been filtering in over the Internet all weekend about no-show status of Google's voice-activated search application. I checked several times Friday for it, and again on Saturday and Sunday evenings to no avail. In fact, on Saturday, I was unable to find the Google Mobile App in the iPhone Apps Store. The Google Mobile App has been around since the Apps Store first launched in July.

People have been speculating all weekend as to why the voice application isn't there. Some suggest that it is because of the draconian approval process that Apple has set in place for iPhone applications. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reports, "Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). 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... 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."

It is believed that the application will arrive at some point today.

The blame may lay with Apple for the absent voice search app, but not for the missing-in-action SMS app. Google announced several weeks ago that it would add the ability to send SMS messages from within Gmail's chatting feature. The SMS chat feature was quickly pulled when Google realized that it wasn't working properly. Google promised that the SMS service would be back within two weeks. Well, it's been two weeks. Where's the feature, Google?