Google's IPhone App Sets Trend Rebelling Against Apple's Rules

From DailyTech: Google has become the showcase of this struggle when developers pointed that Google's hot new voice-powered search, available through the App Store, violated Apple's rules. The Apple iPhone's developer agreement which comes with the Software Development Kit given to Google and others has many strict provisions, which are often broken by developers. One of these provisions is that apps can only use the APIs provided in the SDK and cannot use "private code" -- Apple's unreleased APIs.

One of these APIs contains a function to start recording voice if the users face is in close proximity to the phone. This is used by Apple's voicemail. When Google realized the only way to implement its desired functionality was to get this function, it hacked into the iPhone's code and plucked it out. After all, iPhone apps can use "private" APIs, they just aren't technically allowed to, and these APIs are undocumented.

Undeterred, Google succeeded in implementing the voice feature and in doing so violated its developer agreement. CNet's Tom Krazit recently conversed with a Google spokesperson and he writes, "A Google spokesman confirmed Tuesday that Google Mobile uses undocumented APIs (application programming interfaces) in order to use the iPhone's proximity sensor to prompt a verbal search."

Google is not alone in this seemingly brazen act of defiance; blog site Daring Fireball's Josh Gruber writes, "Occasional use of undocumented methods in public iPhone frameworks is actually pretty common in third-party iPhone apps."

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