Official Google Voice App to Appear on App Store Soon

According to Jason Kincaid at Tech Crunch, Apple apparently has approved the official Google Voice application that’s been waiting in review limbo for more than a year. It should show up on the App Store as soon as Google updates it to work on iOS 4 and take advantage of its capabilities.

Apple initially denied the app citing duplicate functionality which may lead to confusion with the iPhone’s built in Phone app. Naturally, this sparked a rebuke from many tech blogs who saw the statement by Apple as being underestimating and condescending to its customers.

Following the recent release of the App Store Review Guideline, Apple has approved two Google Voice apps by independent developers. Given that Google had already submitted its own app quite a while ago, it was only a matter of time before it was approved.

Google Voice is Google’s VOIP service which lets you combine all your phone numbers into a single number. What this means is if you have multiple phone numbers, for example, one for your office, one for home, one for your mobile phone, you can hand out your Google Voice number instead and you’ll be reachable anywhere, or not at all, depending on your privacy filter.

Google Voice also allows you to make cheap local and international phone calls and transcribes voice mails that you can read in your Gmail inbox. For the moment however, the service is only available in the United States.