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VentureBeat did a bang-up job at making sense of the Apple/Google/AT&T sniping over Google Voice:

Google Voice lets you use a single phone number to receive calls on multiple phones and reach your voicemail. It also lets you send free text messages and make international calls for two cents — features that would jeopardize AT&T’s traditional revenue streams. So there was a ruckus when Apple inexplicably didn’t list it in the app store and then went further to delete similar applications last month, prompting an FCC inquiry.

VentureBeat also reports that in a letter to the FCC, Apple states that Google Voice would “alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality.”

This reads like the understatement of the year. Free texting? 2 cent/min International phone calls? One phone number for everything? Ask yourself, is this something you would take for a test-drive? I think most of us would and it’s no surprise that Apple feels, well … threatened.

After Google’s big announcement regarding the launch of its new operating system, Chrome OS, I can’t help but chuckle at the lyrics to the song Hell is Chrome by one of my favorite bands, Wilco:

“When the Devil came / he was not red. / He was Chrome …”

Is this being hummed within the halls of Microsoft this morning? It’s hard to think otherwise. (In fairness, who could fault Microsoft’s employees for such excellent musical taste?)

The mere announcement of Google’s play won’t, and should not, shake the foundation of Microsoft’s business – yet. But, the move does represent Google’s boldest salvo yet to push the migration of personal computing away from the desktop and on to the cloud. Consumers are already growing more and more accustomed to other cloud-based software, particularly through the high adoption of social media applications.

It’s this ideology that has Microsoft concerned, if not panicked – hell may not be chrome, but Chrome, and everything that Chrome brings with it, could certainly be hell for Microsoft.