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

[Padraig]

Please re-read my post. The SE800/900 gave the user the option to remove the physical keyboard, leaving the phone with touch screen only ( plus a few buttons on the side ), see the screenshot below.

No physical keyboard - yup? I guess you'll have to look again...

You can search on Google to see that Jobs liked these SonyErcisson phones.

Not to mention HTC had the Touch which was announced before the iPhone was revealed. To suggest that Apple invented the form factor is ridiculous.

 

[stationstops]

Everyone in the industry knows this is Jobs' most disingenuous position to date.

Jobs knew to expect competition from Google (anyone who's been in this business for over 30 days would have) - he just didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of having them laugh at him when he asked them to sign a non-compete.

 

[Consultant]

Not to mention HTC had the Touch which was announced before the iPhone was revealed. To suggest that Apple invented the form factor is ridiculous.

LOL. You do know the stylus device first gain acceptance due to the Apple Newton?


FYI, 1990s called. They want their stylus back.

 

[r00fus]

Treo Killer

Android as we now think of it existed in NAME ONLY—it was a mobile OS, yes, but for a NON-touch-based blackberry-like phone with a small screen. You know.... the kind of device everyone assumed was where the future lay, until Apple showed a different future. (Yes, I know they had the Newton AGES ago, but putting it all together into something that really worked WELL for people began with the iPhone.)

Where Google copied Apple—and Jobs is right—is in making an iPhone-style touch OS for touch-centric hardware.

Copying the iPhone transformed the Android project. Just Google for the pre-iPhone Android prototype photos. Look at the hardware AND the OS from back then. Then look at Android AFTER the iPhone came along.

I’m glad people are copying Apple and bringing competition—this will make my iPhone better! But Jobs isn’t the one re-writing history.


EDIT - Here is Android (mimicking RIM, not Apple) before the iPhone:

This looks a lot like my old Treo 600

 

[seamuskrat]

Google, why are you bitching about Apple? Can't you see the bigger problem? Your idea of cloud based apps are going to be killed with wireless carriers imposing draconian caps. I wish Apple and Google realize that the enemy is not each other, but the wireless carriers. This bickering is a waste of time while pretty much all Android phones in the US (sans the Nexus One) and the iPhone are provider-locked. All their ideas of apps (video chat, streaming video, etc) are being killed off slowly by the wireless carriers.

I agree. The cloud is awesome and coming. But with broadband in homes lagging behing in speeds and market penetration and wireless providers smacking down data usage, we will be crippled whil eother nations out think us with cloud based productivity.

It is sad. Our American tech has produced some amazing technologies that could be a huge boon to productivity, communication and especially innovation only have to them handicapped by greedy service providers.

The original poster is correct, it should not be Apple vs. Google, but Apple & Google taking on the media giants, and the phone and cable companies .

 

[genovelle]

The fact is opera has been making great mobile browsers for years, good browsers were available on smartphones.

Android was purchased by Google in 2005 - so, verification that Google has been working on mobile platform for a good number of years.

The iPhone reminds me of the SE P900 - Big touch screen, no physical keyboard ( as an option - it could be removed )... SE doesn't complain about Apple copying them. It is also fact that Steve jobs rather liked the design of the P800/900.

The fact is, all companies copy each other, including Apple. Steve Jobs should be a little less whinny.

Lets see Google purchased Android in 2005. Do you really believe that Apple developed the Iphone from scratch in less than 2 years. It was more like 5 years before it was unveiled in 2007 . Which proves Steve should be pissed. Google's CEO was one of the few who new it was in the works and 3 years into the Iphones development Google secretly starts working on competing with Apple in this space by buying Andriod before the Iphone is even released. If Steve didn't care about protecting his pride. He would have Immediately kick the Google guy off the Apple board which would have surely brought quick attention from the feds.

If Opera's browsers were so great, why was it that until the Iphone came along no one used their phones for browsing the web. I had several smart phones before the Iphone and they were un-usable!!!!

Apple has been screwed many times in the past because they didn't take action in time when people stole from them. They also listened to others and opened their market like with clones and nearly destroyed the company.

 

[genovelle]

Not to mention HTC had the Touch which was announced before the iPhone was revealed. To suggest that Apple invented the form factor is ridiculous.

Rumors of the Iphone had been leaking for years especially coming up to the unveiling. Companies were trying to beat what many assumed Apple was doing. The funny part is where is you beloved touch on the sales charts. It was not the form factor, it was the software that mattered most.

 

[blahblah100]

No, but one company clearly invented multi-touch and the touchscreen smartphone, and the other company clearly invented cloud-syncing of the phone.

Speaking of re-writing history, you are completely wrong. Multi-touch was arguably invented by FingerWorks (the company Apple bought for it's multi-touch technology).

But you clearly lack the sound reasoning to see past your mistaken view, so I expect you to argue the point without any research (which you have clearly done in your original post).

EDIT: I say arguably because the technology in various forms dates back to the 70's

 

[seamuskrat]

Innovation

Innovation comes in many forms. technically, all cell phiones are derivations of the first land line phones, which themselves are a derivation of the telegraph.

Being first to market does not equate dominance. Many companies first to market with a new paradigm of product or service have succummed to second entrants. Many first to markets have maintained their status.

Derivitaive works that add value are just as valid as completely novel products.


Look at pharmaceuticals. Viagra was first and marketed well. There are others, technically they are superior, but Viagra won that battle. In switch, cholesterol drugs the second entry became the dominant product. Lipitor became domninant because it had slightly better features than Mevacor the first statin on the market.

The reality is it does not matter who started work first. It seems from actual product releases that Apple changed the game with the iPhone. Google is catching (caught) up and we all eagerly await the next new innovation wherever it comes from.

Historically, Apple as a company has a very high rate of success of introducing entirely new paradigms, uses or concepts, and/or taking an old use and making it entirely novel. Yes, they have had some failures, but many more successes.

We all know Xerox PARC had the mosue first, but it was a tech toy. A demo. Apple made it a product. Who should get the credit? Well Apple for making it a mainstream device, and some engineers at Xerox for inventing it.

 

[kiljoy616]

If you look at the leaked videos of the original Android phones, they were like Blackberries, with the roller ball and all.

And if Google had been working on Android phones for so long, how was it that Apple was able to beat them to the market by almost an entire year? Also, it took Android maybe about 2 years after the release of the iPhone to have an OS that was in anyways competitive with the iOS.

The reason is simple. Android was never designed for a purely touch interface until Apple showed that this was the future.

So basically Google is the new Microsoft, good software, but no real vision except of course when they copy it. Still I don't care what steve says, competition is good for consumers, and they are both spoiled rich kids, dam their lives must be sweet.

 

[joneill55]

What a bunch of little kids. No matter the competition these companies will continue to make millions and millions of dollars so who gives a ****. Get off your high horse richy

True that one brother!

Like the spoiled rich kids on the block arguing who had the leather basketball first while the rest of us just want them to shut up and shoot hoops.

 

[bdkennedy1]

Tell you what. Develop your own $1 billion revenue stream and then we'll see how you react when someone tells you to "get over it".

This really isn't big news, in fact it is sort of boring. Android is a great platform and a good bit of fun to use. I hope both platforms (android and iphone) not only survive, but continue to innovate at great speeds. The phones are headed in a great direction and I hope to see more advancements soon.

As much as people are telling google to stop complaining, apple people need to do the same. get over it already.

 

[Stella]

Lets see Google purchased Android in 2005. Do you really believe that Apple developed the Iphone from scratch in less than 2 years. It was more like 5 years before it was unveiled in 2007 .

The tablet idea came first, followed by iPhone. We don't know how long it took from beginning to end to produce the iPhone. Sure Google may have copied from Apple. Why don't Apple sue Google if there is a case?

If Opera's browsers were so great, why was it that until the Iphone came along no one used their phones for browsing the web. I had several smart phones before the Iphone and they were un-usable!!!!

1. They did use phones for browsing the web, sure, Apple made it more popular. That doesn't diminish the quality of the Opera browser, which leads me on to data rates....

Before the iPhone, in Canada, data rates were prohibitively high. Not sure about other countries.


1. i've had smartphones and found them perfectly usable. So, the 'usability' differs from person to person. iPhone does not suite all.

Apple has been screwed many times in the past because they didn't take action in time when people stole from them. They also listened to others and opened their market like with clones and nearly destroyed the company.

1. All companies get screwed due to other's copying. Not just Apple.
2. Apple screwed itself by producing products that no one wanted pre-Second Coming of Jobs.

 

[whitedog]

Synchronicity

I guess neither Jobs nor Page has ever heard of synchronicity. Like when Apple and Adobe began development of their photography workflow apps, Aperture and Lightroom, around the same time. This sort of thing happens routinely in the scientific community and is, more less, taken for granted. Two people in different parts of the world have the same or similar ideas at about the same time. It's a reasonable guess that this is what happened with Android and the iPhone. Neither one copied the other. The core technologies each employes became available around the same time; it's entirely natural, even predictable, that people would begin to exploit those technologies completely independent of one another - and derive similar results.

 

[oliversl]

Well, Google decided to compete with Apple because:
- Android copied the UI, unlock, app icons, keyboard, etc
- Android copied the form factor, touch screen, etc
- Android copied the App Store

So, saying "compete" is a nice word to what Android have done. They should be thankful.

 

[snickelfritz]

Consumers and developers should be defending Google.
Google is giving consumers and developers more choice:
• state of the art Android mobile device with Flash 10.1 and HTML5 on any provider.
• state of the art Apple mobile device with HTML5 and AT&T.

Let the market decide which smartphone is "smarter".
If the iPhone and iPad end up being a turkeys, due to incompatibilities with online content, Apple has only themselves to blame.

 

[ToroidalZeus]

No, but it's a good thing Wallpapers, Folders, Multi-tasking and Copy/Paste were, or Apple might never have given them to their users. So Apple clearly took some ideas from Android too it seems.

It's more like Apple purposely removed those functions so they could add them later and make people feel happy that they were in fact upgrading the OS.

 

[dyler]

Wait a cotton pickin' minute... Page wants to date Google's phone involvement from when they started thinking about it and wants Apple to date their involvement from when Apple started selling iPhones. Get real. Apple started first, entered the market first and Google's Android is a poor followup has-been wanna-be.

Nice love it!!! Completely agree, Google cannot innovate anything anymore and all they do is whine about it. I mean look before the iPhone they were copying blackberries and after the iphone they are just copying the iphone now, so this tells me they cannot come up with anything creative on their own, Google just copies people now and they keep failing at it. They need to go back to their math and their search algorithms, stuff they are good at and stop with this crap they are creating now, Android, buzz, etc. etc. etc.

 

[PsudoPowerPoint]

Sounds to me that Erick Schmidt had a conflict of interest. It seems he was on Apple's board of directors, probably privy to Apple's plans for the yet to be released iPhone, and developing a competing product at Google. Apple has a right to be pissed.

 

[garyd]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_4; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.99 Safari/533.4)

OK, perhaps I'm reading too much Fake Steve lately (I'm about a 3rd of the way in to his novel, oPtion$) but I can't help but laugh when I see all this public banter about who entered the mobile phone or tablet market first. Was it Apple or Google? Now Google is claiming that Steve Jobs is rewriting history but the part that cracks me up is that niether acknowledge the past 10-20 years of innovation by companies like Palm, Nokia, SonyEricsson, Symbian, Microsoft, etc. Maybe those companies have fallen behind the competition but this smacks of many past attempts to pretend that Commodore never beat the tar out of everyone in the home PC market for several years.

 

[gnagy]

Well, Google decided to compete with Apple because:
- Android copied the UI, unlock, app icons, keyboard, etc
- Android copied the form factor, touch screen, etc
- Android copied the App Store

So, saying "compete" is a nice word to what Android have done. They should be thankful.

I agree 100%. The google boys are the new pirates of Silicon Valley.

 

[parapup]

Android as we now think of it existed in NAME ONLY—it was a mobile OS, yes, but for a NON-touch-based blackberry-like phone with a small screen.

a) Google is not a hardware company and b) They just tailored their OS to exploit whatever hardware capabilities were available at the time - and they have been pretty quick at that - which means if BB style hardware was popular in 2005 that's what they tailored their OS in 2005. When Touch capable slick hardware with Gigahertz class CPUs became available - they made their OS exploit it. They will do the same for Tablets with Gingerbread.

If Google was a hardware+software company like Palm or Apple your point may be valid but since they have to pretty much depend on other hardware vendors to put up innovation on h/w front - I don't think you can expect more from them.

As to copying - that's just childish to claim everyone just copies Apple. It happens all time and parties swap positions. Apple now has noise cancellation, multitasking etc. which Android based phones have had since some time now. So it's nothing bad - happens all the time - Apple just played catch up to Android with iPhone4.

 

[HitchHykr]

Well of course, Larry. Because we all know that iPhone development didn't start until it was announced....

Exactly.

 

[deconstruct60]

Android as we now think of it existed in NAME ONLY—it was a mobile OS, yes, but for a NON-touch-based blackberry-like phone with a small screen. You know.... the kind of device everyone assumed was where the future lay, until Apple showed a different future.

Revisionist history.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/11/iphone-and-lg-ke850-separated-at-birth/

Note that the LG model had already won the design award and had been exhibited at trade shows earlier. Who was first in which lab is unknown.


For the exact set of features the iPhone is unique (some number of buttons, specific software, specific web browser, etc). That there were not several 3-3.5" touch screen oriented phones in R&D labs in 2005-2006 in several companies is a crock.

Android objective was not a specific form factor. It was to be a platform for a broad set of devices. There was always going to be devices that mimic classic RIM and anything else out there.

 

[*LTD*]

The MDN take is spot-on, as usual:

Jobs is not "rewriting history." Yes, Google was working on Android before they saw the iPhone. Everyone knows that already. However, Google obviously had little idea WTF they were doing until they saw Apple's iPhone. Google was busy copying BlackBerries, for crying out loud! Then, once they saw the iPhone, Boom! on went the lights and they started working to make Android a half-assed iPhone copy and, quite likely, infringed on Apple's patented intellectual property in the process (court cases are ongoing). This is the gist of what Jobs is saying, and his history is absolutely right.

Page is being quite disingenuous, probably out of acute embarrassment. Did you really found Google in order to be just another lame Apple copier, Larry? Or are you just going along with Eric T. Mole's so-called "strategy?" Either way, you and Sergey ought to be embarrassed.

Apple leads. The likes of Microsoft, Google, and many others follow poorly. As usual.