DailyTech - Google's Larry Page on Android: Steve Jobs is Trying to "Rewrite History"

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Gadgets Google's Larry Page on Android: Steve Jobs is Trying to "Rewrite History"
Brandon Hill (Blog) - July 9, 2010 3:08 PM

62 comment(s) - last by macthemechanic.. on Jul 14 at 3:33 PM

Apple's Steve Jobs

Google's Larry Page (Source: Latest Technology News)

Larry Page tries to set the record straight with regards to Android

It's no secret that the relationship between Apple and Google is a bit rocky to say the least. While the two companies forged a partnership with the launch of the original iPhone (Google makes its presence known on the iPhone via Mobile Safari search, YouTube app, and Maps app), Steve Jobs over the past six months or so has been growing a bit resentful of Google's rise to power with its Android mobile operating system.

However, Google's Larry Page now contends that Jobs' anger is misplaced. While speaking at the Allen & Co conference this week in Silicon Valley, Page stated, "We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet enabled and have good browsers and all that because that did not exist in the marketplace."

"I think that characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable."

Page then went on to say that Jobs' characterization of the events that took place leading up to Google's release of Android OS as "a little bit of rewriting history."

Earlier this year, Steve Jobs went on a rampage at an Apple Town hall stating that Google's "Don’t Be Evil Mantra Is Bulls**t" -- another source contends that Jobs said that "a load of crap" was the actual statement used, but you get the point.

Last month at the All Things D conference, Jobs again touched on the Google subject stating, "They decided to compete with us. We didn't go into the search business!"

Despite the difference of opinion on Google' motives for Android, Google CEO (and former Apple board member) Eric Schmidt also weighed in stating that the two companies still have a strong partnership with the iPhone. And just this past March, Jobs and Schmidt were seen canoodling outside a cafe in Palo Alto, California.

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RE: How does it feel, Apple?

By Reclaimer77 on 7/10/2010 12:03:51 PM , Rating: 2

Ok even if you and Jobs are right? Who gives a shit?

Did the CEO of Honda blast other car makers for coming out with hybrids too? Does the CEO of Porsche cry about other companies using high performance Bosch parts? Did Henry Ford blast everyone who came out with cars besides Ford??

WOW Tony, you mean companies respond to competition, what the consumer is buying, and other market forces? HOLY SHIT!! You just solved the criminal case of the century! You're a goddamn genius. Please link your published paper on such an amazing observation that nobody's ever thought of before.

Seriously watching you argue such a retarded position is like, well, watching retards fight. I guess everyone besides Apple should just stop making smart-phones this fucking instant, right? Or they should purposely use interfaces the consumers don't want because Jobs might accuse you of copying him!

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RE: How does it feel, Apple?

By sprockkets on 7/10/10, Rating: 0

By sprockkets on 7/10/2010 9:36:11 PM , Rating: 0

quote:
Ok even if you and Jobs are right? Who gives a sht?

In other words how dare you have a clear logical argument backed by empirical evidence. Resorting to four letter words gives clear proof that this is a touchy subject for you, and you give into a lot of emotion over nothing.

quote:
Did the CEO of Honda blast other car makers for coming out with hybrids too? Does the CEO of Porsche cry about other companies using high performance Bosch parts? Did Henry Ford blast everyone who came out with cars besides Ford??

No, and neither did those CEOs sit on each other boards.

By the way, why did Chevy and Dodge decide to release retro versions of cars they let die out years ago?

quote:
WOW Tony, you mean companies respond to competition, what the consumer is buying, and other market forces? HOLY SHT!! You just solved the criminal case of the century! You're a goddamn genius. Please link your published paper on such an amazing observation that nobody's ever thought of before. Seriously watching you argue such a retarded position is like, well, watching retards fight. I guess everyone besides Apple should just stop making smart-phones this fcking instant, right? Or they should purposely use interfaces the consumers don't want because Jobs might accuse you of copying him!

Hmm... perhaps instead of just copying a market leader with their features why not innovate like Palm did with their card system? Oh wait, Apple doesn't copy others and respects Palm's intellectual property. Motorola was at least nice not to enable multi-touch on the droid in the US.

Or you can be like these morons and just copy blatantly.

http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2009/06/s...

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RE: How does it feel, Apple?

By Tony Swash on 7/11/10, Rating: 0

By Tony Swash on 7/11/2010 1:02:39 AM , Rating: 0

quote:
WOW Tony, you mean companies respond to competition, what the consumer is buying, and other market forces? HOLY SHIT!! You just solved the criminal case of the century! You're a goddamn genius. Please link your published paper on such an amazing observation that nobody's ever thought of before.

Seriously watching you argue such a retarded position is like, well, watching retards fight. I guess everyone besides Apple should just stop making smart-phones this fucking instant, right? Or they should purposely use interfaces the consumers don't want because Jobs might accuse you of copying him!

I think the point here is that until Google decided to directly compete against Apple's flagship product, and chose to alter its previous Android development trajectory to make Android more closely resemble the Apple iPhone, Apple had made great efforts to work closely with Google. Apple tried to integrate Google products with its own products and it went so far as to invite the Google CEO onto its board.

Google chose to orientate its Android product to directly compete with Apple. This made Eric Schmidt's (Google's CEO) position on the Apple board untenable and he stood down. Apple made no hostile or critical public comments about this and did not publicly criticise Google.

Google then held its annual development conference earlier this year when its senior executives repeatedly attacked Apple and made it plain that they saw Apple as some sort of enemy.

Apple's public response to all this has been very muted. Steve Jobs has made some public remarks elliptically critical of Google and has allegedly made some stronger critical remarks in a private internal Apple staff conference.

Apparently Larry Page feels it is OK to criticise and parody Apple explicitly and in public but takes umbrage at the suggestion that Google was influenced in its design of Android by Apple's iPhone.

It all seems a bit rich to me particularly, as I have shown in my previous posts in this thread, that there is evidence to strongly suggest that Google did indeed copy Apple's iPhone.

To put it more pithily: Google started throwing shit at Apple long before Apple made some fairly restrained criticisms of Google. It was Google that decided to break the partnership with Apple.

Why Google decided to do that, to break with Apple, is not clear. Its not clear what the commercial justification for this was. Google will be damaged by this as will Apple. Personally I am not convinced that it was a clear strategic decision by Google to break with Apple, I suspect that it was a decision that Google stumbled into as a result of its loose (and fairly chaotic) internal decision making process. Now Google is stuck with this position and it would be difficult to backtrack.

I also suspect that in the long term it will be Google and not Apple that will suffer the most from a break between the two companies.

I also suspect that Google will eventually cease to be the darling of forums, but that's for another discussion.

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RE: How does it feel, Apple?

By Reclaimer77 on 7/11/2010 4:30:07 AM , Rating: 3

quote:
Google then held its annual development conference earlier this year when its senior executives repeatedly attacked Apple and made it plain that they saw Apple as some sort of enemy.

Apple is EVERYONE'S enemy right now because of Steve Jobs and his maniacal assault on open platforms in his attempt to lock-down the entire world. I mean for fucks sake, how many lawsuits has Apple filed this year alone for bullshit anyway?

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RE: How does it feel, Apple?

By Tony Swash on 7/11/10, Rating: 0

By Tony Swash on 7/11/2010 11:59:14 AM , Rating: 0

quote:
Apple is EVERYONE'S enemy right now because of Steve Jobs and his maniacal assault on open platforms in his attempt to lock-down the entire world. I mean for fucks sake, how many lawsuits has Apple filed this year alone for bullshit anyway?

I am not sure I understand what you are talking about.

Clearly Apple is not the enemy of its 100 million or so customers and will not be the enemy of the 30 million or so new customers it will probably add in the next year or so.

Apple does indeed seek to control the elements that go into its product stack more than most companies and this results in a customer experience that is very popular. That's why Apple does it.

Apple is not more litigious than any other tech company with a lot of original material to protect. Apple was sued first over the iPhone and holds enough patents to sue a lot more if it chose. Generally Apple's attitude is "let's make the best products and let the market decide". Apple has a lot of confidence in its own abilities to compete.

Apple has sought to work with, link with and partner with many other companies and its biggest rivals (MS and Google for example).

Apple has committed to, and actively supports, numerous open source projects: see here for a full list

http://www.apple.com/opensource/

Of course webkit is its most significant contribution to open source and open standards.

It is also worth noting MacOSX is full of open standards. For example throughout MacOS and in any MacOSX app you can save almost anything as a PDF. Apple's support of PDF in OSX is better than Adobe's own tools for PDFs.

I think the view of Apple as a dangerous closed and hostile company is just a rather juvenile and reassuring myth amongst many techies. The tech equivalent of thinking that the Apollo moon shots were faked. Many techies are deeply disorientated by Apple's success and disempowered because their special techie abilities are generally not needed by Apple products end users (which is one of the reasons why Apple's products are so popular)

Thats enough for now - I am on vacation in Moab the sun is shining and Arches National park beckons :)

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