Friday saw a war of press releases between Apple and Google over the apparent rejection of the Google Voice app on the App Store. The Googleplex and One Infinite Loop made public more details on their dispute, which cuts right to the heart of public perceptions of both companies, Apple's willingness to allow competition in key areas of iPhone functionality, and the coming battle for dominance in the mobile device marketplace.

Last month, the FCC began an investigation into reports that Apple had blocked Google Voice from the App Store. It sent letters to Google, Apple and AT&T, requesting details on communications between the companies, whether the app had in fact been blocked, and whether AT&T had played any role in the decision. In response, Apple sent a letter to the FCC, saying in part "Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application
, and continues to study it."

A long requested feature of Google Voice was a simple one: forward inbound text messages to email. Google Voice users get voicemails auto-transcribed and emailed to them, but text messages were not. Users can read and respond to them online in addition to their phones in the normal way, but email forwarding wasn’t an option.

Tonight that changed. Google Voice users now have the ability to forward inbound text messages to email. And even better, you can reply from email as well.

There are third party services that have offered this, but they require users to give these services your Google Voice credentials, which is never a good idea. It’s great that Google launched this feature directly.

Since they seem to be taking requests, here’s my next one: launch an API. I can’t wait to see what developers come up with, and I’d love to use those non-Google services in a secure way without giving them my Google Voice credentials.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investigating Apple's rejection of Google's official Google Voice application and other third-party iPhone apps from the App Store. Apple had rejected the iPhone Apps earlier in the week. They had stated that the iPhone apps were duplicating features that are already available on the iPhone such as Dialer, SMS etc. Google Voice (formerly GrandCentral) is a free and innovative service that uses voice over internet protocol to link customers' phone numbers together. Users of Google Voice are able to select a single U.S. phone number, from various area codes. When a Google Number is called, any or all of the user's phones may be set to ring based on the calling number or on the contact group (e.g. Family, Friends, Work, etc), and/or based on time of day (e.g. disabling a home phone during business hours and routing calls to mobile or business number).