I was in the business of mobile applications pre-iPhone, the era of phone companies picking winners or trying to do things themselves and the net result was that most mobile functionality beyond the basics was garbage. Not just the devices but the poor choices mediocre people at some high-mid level in the phone companies would make on all kinds of weak decision making criteria led to bad poorly thought out software choices, both on the consumer side and the enterprise side.
Of course carriers thought it was in their best interests and that they could beat market based product discovery. Neither was really true as the explosion of innovation caused by the iPhone and the cadre of early post-iPhone mobile app developers demonstrated.
This kind of move by Verizon is a misguided step back to that world. It's frustrating and stupid and in the long run unlikely to be a win for Verizon, despite any short term gain for some internal project or other built by a second rate team put together to defend someone's budget allocation.