When the feds smelled anti-competitive behavior on Apple's breath in July after the computer maker rejected an iPhone app for Google's Voice calling service, the FCC asked Apple, its telecom partner AT&T and Google to explain what happened.

When the three tech giants replied three weeks later, one decided to file part of its answer in secret.

Oddly, that was Google — the ostensible victim in the incident and a company that prides itself on its openness and transparency.

Google's decision (.pdf) causes a big blind spot in the story of the highest-profile mobile app store rejection yet — a story that is likely to change how app stores are run, how people expect apps stores to be curated, and whether the feds decide to regulate them.

That's why Wired.com is asking the feds Friday, via an official government sunshine request (.pdf), to publish the answer in full.

In contrast to Google, Apple, a company known for its ultra-secret ways, opted for total public disclosure in its letter to the FCC — which it also linked to on the front page of its website.

Apple couldn't actually bring itself to say it rejected Google' innovative calling application, instead saying it was still studying the application, months later, to see if might confuse users.

AT&T, a company with quite a bit of practice sharing information secretly with the feds (specifically, your info to the NSA), also choose full disclosure. It unequivocally said IT had no hand in the rejection of the Voice app and laying out its agreement with Apple over streaming video and VOIP applications.

But Google told the feds that its conversations with Apple were commercial secrets and so filed that portion of its answer (.pdf) under seal. That means there's no way to fact-check what Apple and AT&T told the feds.

With all due respect to Google's great search algorithms, that secrecy is just ridiculous.

For one, there's no commercial advantage anyone could possibly get by knowing the timeline and contents of the conversation between Google and Apple over an iPhone app. And even if there were, it's got to be substantial — not hypothetical or slight — to count for an exemption.

Secondly, this whole story started with Google complaining to the press that Apple blocked its iPhone app. If that's such a secret, then Google would never have talked about it in the first place.

Thirdly, there's no way to fact-check whether Apple actually rejected the application or not without Google's side of the story being public. Given how important app stores and their policies are turning out to be — and with the FCC thinking about rules for them, the public deserves to know what happened.

Fourth, the only real reason for Google to keep these records from the public is to try to keep a good relationship with Apple, by continuing to downplay the incident.

Google has some prime real estate on the iPhone and as part of its strategy to fight Microsoft, has long had good relations with Apple (with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt sitting on the Apple board until just a few days after this started). The feds even suspect that the two companies had an agreement not to poach each other's employees, a possible violation of competition laws. Once the story became bigger than they expected, Google made it clear when it spoke to reporters about the rejection that it wasn't mad at Apple.

But that's not a fair reason to keep information from the public.

And finally, the FCC has some strict rules about what you need to do to justify having your comments hidden from the public, including naming the specific "substantial" harms and giving a deadline for when the comments could come to light.

Google did neither.

Wired.com is filing the following Freedom of Information Act request Thursday, asking for the full Google answer and for rush handling by the feds.

Google asked for — and will likely get — the opportunity to challenge Wired.com's request.

Wired.com looks forward to its justifications and the opportunity to rebut them.

Of course, Google could save all of us the trouble and just publish the full document themselves today and ask the FCC to do the same.

After all, Google — if AT&T and Apple can be open and transparent, certainly you can too.

Hat Tip: CS

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