Everyone is so excited – so excited! – about the Google iPhone app that is supposed to allow instant voice search. But where is it? The youtube video that preceded it is now down and all mention has been scoured from Google’s website, Soviet-style. Not a good sign.

Writes TC:

This is an extraordinary event. Other search app providers have told me they’ve been kept waiting months for approval of their app, with no explanation from Apple. But Google and Apple are close, even sharing Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a board member. Something definitely went sideways, most likely involving Apple throwing a fit of some sort (Apple is just plain weird about press).

Clearly the rumors that Apple is planning a search system are true and this tread too closely to Apple’s turf. But why not just say it? Why all the skulking? Could Apple be taking a page from Stalin’s playbook? The “hushing up inconvenient news” page, not the “purge of millions of intelligentsia page,” obviously.