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Google Co-Founder Accuses Jobs of 'Rewriting History' of iPhone and Android

Carniphage said:
Do you mind if I edit you again?
Click to expand...

Nope, always fun to see what you choose... assuming I get to do a rebuttal later :)

Although in this case, I'd have quoted this section instead:

There is no first here. Like many other things, it was an idea whose time had come.
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When technology reaches a certain capability / price point, many designers get similar ideas. After that, funding and publicity play a huge part... especially the latter.

For example, just a few months before the iPhone was revealed, the OpenMoko project had demonstrated a Linux based smartphone with multi-touch gestures and pinch to zoom. It had icons with an icon dock. Even a chrome bezel, I think. But it got very, very little publicity, because it wasn't from a company like Apple.

(At least, until the iPhone was revealed, at which point a few people wondered if Apple had copied some of those ideas.)

Everyone, Apple included, sees good ideas and expands on them. Apple wasn't first with a swipe-to-unlock. Or capacitive touch. Or Google Maps. Or location by cell id. Or zoomable browser. Or flick-scrolling. Or print quality "retina" display.

It was just a matter of time to see the best ideas put together. Apple deserves much praise for doing that. So does Android. So will MS with WP7.

Unless you're young enough that a few years seems like a long time, one company being a few months or even years ahead of another is really nothing in the grand scheme of things. The smartphone market will go on for years.

I'll say this too: currently sold smartphones are infants compared to what they could, should and will be capable of.
 
jfanning said:
You need to go back and read these in context, the likes of Apple, BP, Shell, Dell etc don't share wealth, they don't create jobs in a significant manner, they funnel funds from one location to another.
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So what you are saying seems to be....
All engineering companies.
All mining companies
All service companies
All entertainment companies
All retail companies

Don't create any wealth - they just move it around?

If I have mis-interpreted what you said, would it be rude to ask which companies do create wealth? Because there does not seem to be much left?

C.
 
kdarling said:
Everyone, Apple included, sees good ideas and expands on them. Apple wasn't first with a swipe-to-unlock. Or capacitive touch. Or Google Maps. Or location by cell id. Or zoomable browser. Or flick-scrolling. Or print quality "retina" display.

It was just a matter of time to see the best ideas put together. Apple deserves much praise for doing that. So does Android. So will MS with WP7.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I have been saying. Apple came up with a recipe which made the "smartphone" (a device that was previously for the nerdy pocket-protector brigade) - appeal to a much wider audience.

By analogy, the inventor of the automobile deserves credit for putting together an internal combustion engine, a four wheeled chassis, and devising a control mechanism usable by regular people. Even though none of these were original inventions, the alchemy was putting them together.

Google and Palm deserve credit for doing the same.

I am less convinced that Microsoft really understands this market - I don't think we will really know until WP7 gets tested by a wide audience.

C.
 
KnightWRX said:
The problem is you shouldn't have married the woman I was already shagging on the side.
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You appear to be struggling with my attempts at colorful metaphors.

Prior to the G1 - Google did not have any cellphone customers.
Not one.

So terms of the metaphor - at that point - Google (you) was not shagging anyone. You were a virgin.

C.
 
Carniphage said:
Don't create any wealth - they just move it around?

If I have mis-interpreted what you said, would it be rude to ask which companies do create wealth? Because there does not seem to be much left?
Click to expand...

I didn't use the word "create", I used the word "share". A lot of companies create a lot of wealth, not many share this wealth.
 
Carniphage said:
You appear to be struggling with my attempts at colorful metaphors.

Prior to the G1 - Google did not have any cellphone customers.
Not one.

So terms of the metaphor - at that point - Google (you) was not shagging anyone. You were a virgin.
Click to expand...

And you seem to assume things about my retort. You married your wife or she wouldn't be your wife (iPhone release). And what a wedding it was. Problem was, I was shagging her on and off since 2005 (bought Android Inc.) and now she decided to have a full blown serious affair with me (released G1).

Leave the colorful metaphors out, they rarely work anyway.
 
charlituna said:
And actually we don't know that Google was really thinking about getting into the phone business at that time. They were in the midst of this spaghetti on the wall buy up of all sorts of foundering and failing start ups. Some of which they still haven't done anything with. they might have bought Android thinking about something like, like a tablet computer or even a general computer OS
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We do actually know quite a bit. We know that Google's business model is to get people on the internet so Google can show them ads. That's why they give all this stuff away for free.

Google very early saw that rich internet browsing on a smartphone was actually getting to be less bleeding edge (pun intended) and more useful to the general public. There can be little doubt that they wanted to encourage this development.

In addition, Google is trying to facilitate the idea of rich internet applications (people do more stuff on the internet and less stuff with desktop apps => more money for Google). That means JavaScript execution at lightning speed and fast HTML5 support. This is part of the reason why they made Android OS and Chrome.

The other major reason is defensive, and this has been directly confirmed by Google; if any company gets to be too powerful they may make some decisions that go against the interests of Google. For example, Microsoft might decide that HTML5 adoption isn't really that important. This would be directly contrary to Google's long term goals. Reaction: Make our own browser.

When the iPhone came out it was pretty clear from the beginning that Apple could conceivably become a major player in the smartphone market. Apple have a history of completely dominating the music player market without being first to market by a longshot. They also have a reputation for extremely tight control.

If Apple (or another company) would gain a de facto monopoly on the market, they could pretty much decide where mobile computing were headed. For example, they could leverage their own competing ad system and they could block Google from collecting analytics. Google already knew what happens in a market with a monopoly - it take years to break it. It's taken more than a decade to break the IE monopoly and IE still has about 50% of the market.

The only reasonable solution is to start competing before the monopoly materializes.

I don't believe for a moment that Apple took these steps because "Google started it". They might have moved them up instead of waiting for a dominating position but I can't imagine that Apple hadn't already seen this angle long before. Jobs is nothing if not perceptive when it comes to business.
 
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