Google Voice for the iPhone has finally arrived. As it turns out, Google used some of its own Internet homebrew and rolled out the new version of the popular app in a browser-based HTML5 version.

The move highlights the wisdom of Google, coming as it has fresh from the battlefields, where it has fought to keep the Internet open and free. Now, less than 24 hours before Apple rolls out its new tablet, Google decided it was time to give the gatekeepers at 1 Infinite Loop something to think about.

Today’s Google Voice release wasn’t about the application at all, but rather a shot across Apple’s bow that signals the power, and possibility, of HTML5. As an incredibly powerful browser-based platform, HTML5 represents Google’s wrecking ball to Apple’s walled garden. It’s the most promising way of circumventing any gatekeeper in an effort to deliver net neutrality’s promise of “any app, any device, on any carrier.”

While today’s release was relatively quiet in Google terms, and the press pretty much glanced and made little more than a mention here and there, this is an event that both carriers and closely guarded companies like Apple are going to be reacting to for a long time. We already heard the cries of dismay, as well as outright defections, as Apple held the Google Voice app from its users in order to protect its proprietary UI. Days of playing that strategy may be numbered if Google has anything to say about it.  

Google proved today that when Web-based browser technology like HTML5 and the processing power of the cloud are combined with mobile, the results are a dissolving of technological borders. I think people often forget that the Internet and mobile Internet are the same thing. Google and the FCC are hell bent on reminding you of that fact. 

Imagine the world Google is showing us with this release. HTML5 can eliminate hardware shortcomings through the use of cloud-based processing. Fragmentation becomes a thing of the past, as applications need only be built for the major mobile browsers in order to run across all platforms.

With today’s release, Google is also demonstrating that the carriers’ play to use voice as a marketing ploy is irrelevant. In fact, Google is doing more than anyone else in the industry to force the case for the elimination of voice plans on smartphones.

I’ve read reports online of T-Mobile USA customers who are using Google Voice for unlimited calling. With an unlimited data plan, they’re paying a combined total of $39.99 a month. Those are the kinds of numbers Google wants people to be thinking about as it elbows its way into the wireless industry.

While I’m not always comfortable with the size and power of Google, I must say that there’s something liberating about the direction in which they’re guiding this industry, because the biggest winners will inevitably be the consumers.

Critics that lambasted the Nexus One for not revolutionizing the smartphone missed the point entirely. Critics wondering why Google is playing with a little carrier like T-Mobile are also just shy of where this is headed. I think T-Mobile is exactly the kind of middling carrier, just on the 3G bandwagon, that Google is happy to have as its personal mobile lab. T-Mobile is just the right size for Google to have its say. All it has to do is dangle the latest and greatest in Android in front of their noses, and it can pretty much have its way. 

These are early times for Google in the wireless industry. What we’ve seen so far (Android, Google Voice, Nexus One, direct-to-consumer online retailing) are baby steps that will eventually mean a cumulative giant leap for the entirety of the wireless industry.