I think some of the confusion stems from the way I interpreted his post. I assumed the poster meant that Eric Schmidt used his knowledge of the iPhone to change Android, rather then to start it. I obviously think he's wrong, but I thought that is what he was saying.
It doesn't, but the discussion went towards it so I just pointed out that Apple had started the iPhone project before Google had bought Android. However, Android the company predates the iPhone project, like Knight said.The core question here is why does it matter who started first?