Apple said to have approved official Google Voice app

Well, it's finally happening. After what seems like forever, Google's app for Google Voice is going to be coming to the App Store for iPhone. Apple's previously heavy handed approach to app approval appears to be something of the past.

Unofficial Google Voice apps have been cropping up in the app store for a couple weeks now -- and it was just a matter of time before Apple agreed to approve the official one.

TechCrunch says it will happen within a few weeks, which is surely going to make an insane number of iPhone users happy. Even though there are already similar apps in the app store, they all cost money, and are provided by third parties. The official app will likely be free, and contain extra functionality that users will find useful.

We haven’t gotten the chance to use the official Google application, but it’s possible that it will include functionality that the others don’t. Namely, push notifications for inbound SMS and voicemail messages (Google doesn’t provide an API for these, so third parties would have to route these messages through their own servers to offer push notifications). -- TechCrunch