Google Chairman Says Android Started 'Before the iPhone Effort'
In the face of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ accusations that Google imitated the iPhone for their Android operating system, Google chairman Eric Schmidt says that Android started production first.
Walter Isaacson revealed the height of Jobs’ displeasure with the Android OS posthumously in the Apple co-founder’s biography.
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product,” Jobs said.
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Although Schmidt declined directly to address Jobs’ quote, he did say, “The Android effort started before the iPhone effort,” reported Reuters.
The two companies have been locked in a bitter rivalry for years, issuing lawsuits and counter lawsuits while competing for the majority share of the smartphone market.
However, there is some truth to Schmidt’s statement. Android Inc. was established by Andy Rubin in 2003 and introduced by Google in 2005.
This was well before Apple released the first iPhone in 2007.
However, the first phone with the Android system, the HTC Dream (G1), hit store shelves September 2008 – over a full year after the iPhone, and its operating system, iOS.
Perhaps another reason Jobs said, “Google you f***ing ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off,” is because during the iPhone’s development phase, Schmidt was on Apple’s board of directors.
Schmidt started at Apple in 2006. By 2009, he resigned because of the growing contest between his company’s Android system and the iPhone. It could have been construed as a conflict of interest.
Schmidt claimed that there was no animosity between the two.
“[Jobs and I] had adult conversations about [the conflict of interest] at the beginning and the end… After I left the board, they had me to events and to private dinners,” he said.
This perspective clashes with Jobs’ vow to “go thermonuclear” with Apple’s lawsuits against Google.
Jobs, whose iOS comes exclusive for the iPhone, could have felt betrayed, particularly because of Google’s choice to put their Android OS on many phones.
Google has currently produced four versions of their widespread software, with the latest code named Ice Cream Sandwich. Over 190 million Android devices are currently in the market, compared to over 300 million iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iTouch) for Apple.
