Google Voice App and the iPhone

An article in USA Today states that the FCC is looking into why Google's Voice App (application) is not "banned" from Apple/ATT's iPhone. This is an excellent example of why we have government and what government can do to increase the competitiveness of the marketplace.

Basically the story is that Google has an app that can run on the iPhone, but is Apple does not allow Google to sell the application. This hurts consumers who would choose the iPhone but want to use the Google app. While this may not be a large group of consumers, it is indicative of a bigger issue - mentioned in the article. That is, consumer choice among cell phones, applications and network carriers. Here in the US, there is not complete choice - so overall welfare is lowered and some economic welfare may be transferred from consumers to producers - where the producers are able to covert the additional consumer surplus to higher profits.