Apple stalls on approving Siri-like Google Search update

It’s obvious that Apple has a “my house, my rules” kind of approach to managing its App Store. And it’s even more obvious that the company isn’t very fond of Google at the moment.

So it’s really no surprise that after three weeks, it has yet to approve the highly-anticpated Google Search update  — you know, the one that adds the Siri-like Google Now feature…

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cZ4mdrlWYM[/tube]

Earlier this month, Google announced that it would be bringing its new digital assistant from Android 4.1 over to iOS via an update to its Google Search app. But it has yet to materialize.

Computerworld reports:

“Two weeks ago today, Google announced it was bringing its Android 4.1-level Voice Search feature to Apple’s iOS platform. At the time, I raised what I called “the million-dollar question”: Would Apple ever actually allow this to happen?

Turns out my skepticism wasn’t completely unfounded. During its August 8 announcement, Google told reporters it expected the Voice Search app to hit the App Store within a few days. Two weeks later, we’ve got nothing but crickets.”

Apparently Google submitted the app for review around the first of August, making it nearly three weeks ago. And considering that the approval process generally only takes around 7 days, it certainly looks like Apple is dragging its feet here. The question is, why?

Well the App Store guidelines state that your app can’t duplicate a core functionality of iOS. Apple cited this rule as the reason why it avoided approving Google’s Voice app for over a year, and it seems like this Search update would fall in similar territory. But worse. Google’s Now search function isn’t just similar to Siri, it’s actually superior in a lot of ways.

Yeah, it’ll certainly be interesting to see what Apple decides to do here.