Apple is known for ruling its electronics kingdom with an iron fist.  From killing Mac clones to trying to "brick" unlocked iPhones, the company has not been afraid to resort to extreme measures to maintain complete control and exclusivity over its products. 

However, when it comes to the App store and iPhone/iPod Touch developer community, Apple is presented with the unique and almost impossible challenge of trying to control is fiefdom against not one method of unlocking, but a myriad of different complex challenges to Apple's authority.

Google has become the showcase of this struggle when developers pointed that Google's hot new voice-powered search, available through the App Store, violated Apple's rules.  The Apple iPhone's developer agreement which comes with the Software Development Kit given to Google and others has many strict provisions, which are often broken by developers.  One of these provisions is that apps can only use the APIs provided in the SDK and cannot use "private code" -- Apple's unreleased APIs.

One of these APIs contains a function to start recording voice if the users face is in close proximity to the phone.  This is used by Apple's voicemail.  When Google realized the only way to implement its desired functionality was to get this function, it hacked into the iPhone's code and plucked it out.  After all, iPhone apps can use "private" APIs, they just aren't technically allowed to, and these APIs are undocumented.

Undeterred, Google succeeded in implementing the voice feature and in doing so violated its developer agreement.  CNet's Tom Krazit recently conversed with a Google spokesperson and he writes, "A Google spokesman confirmed Tuesday that Google Mobile uses undocumented APIs (application programming interfaces) in order to use the iPhone's proximity sensor to prompt a verbal search."

Google is not alone in this seemingly brazen act of defiance; blog site Daring Fireball's John Gruber writes, "Occasional use of undocumented methods in public iPhone frameworks is actually pretty common in third-party iPhone apps."

So what might Apple do?  Well some are expecting Apple may disable the function that powers Google's code.  However, this might break the app, one of the App store's most popular, and might risk losing the developer support of Google, which perhaps ironically has become one of Apple's most powerful partners.

On the other hand if Apple does nothing its setting another equally unappealing precedent -- that it will let some features live while blocking others, a move many will likely equate to favoritism.  Apple has shown no qualms with killing iPhone apps in the past, but in this case it has kept silent and not made a decision either way yet.