Google And Apple - Confrontation Of Personalities

For the last few months we have been witnessing the competition between Google and Apple that becomes more and more significant. We tried to analyze some facts and made a conclusion that the confrontation is more personal than corporate.

Three years ago when the first iPhone was presented, the partnership between these companies was very close and Google CEO Eric Shmidt said "this product will be hot" while shaking hands with Steve Jobs. Nowadays this situation cannot be even imagined. Confrontation officially started when Apple sued HTC and gave a start to an era some people call "World War III". As the patents mentioned in the lawsuit are related to devices' OS but not hardware, it is obvious that was the way Apple made a legal assault on Google.

In search of reasons for this action we can recall Jobs saying Google have been stealing ideas implemented in iPhone. Another time Apple SEO said at the company's meeting: "Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won't let them". Though Eric Shmidt commented on this saying that he admires "Apple and Steve enormously", Google understood that day the upcoming battle will be very serious.

In early 2006 Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin used to visit Jobs as they thought of him as of a mentor. On August 28 Eric Shmidt was elected to Apple's board of directors. Apple CEO even had a long trips with him near his house in Palo Alto discussing the future of technology and creating ideas to work on together. It seemed like the partnership was very close, but at the moment iPhone was presented Google had already developing its own OS - Android. But that wasn't about conflict - Google just feared their rivals could block access to its services on smartphones and other mobile devices that have proprietary operational systems. Creating a new open platform would allow company to somehow control their market share in the mobile world.

But the more details were revealed about Android, the more Jobs became angry about stealing iPhone features. In 2008 he warned Google executives if they deployed multitouch he would sue. That moment he looked really heated and fierce. But Google ignored that threatening, and its former CEO claimed he's not afraid of anyone, even Apple.

After that situation it was calm for some period of time - first Android versions didn't support multitouch. But the OS was improving fast, and Motorola Droid ad with tagline "Everything iDon't ... Droid Does" added fuel to the fire. Finally, on August 3, 2009 Shmidt stepped down from Apple's board. Jobs explained the departure with Google entering their "core business".

Another episode was with AdMob, the mobile advertisement company that was bought by Google after Apple inexplicably forgot to consummate its offer after 45-day "no shop" provision. When the Cupertino's company bought AdMob's rival Quattro Wireless, Google didn't wait long to introduce Google Nexus One, a device that has design flourishes unmistakably associated with the iPhone.

Later that month Steve said about rival's "Don't Be Evil" mantra: "It's bullshit". In response Google released an Android update with multitouch enabled.

As we can see the struggle between these tech giants is very tense. The next move is unclear, but Apple is rumored to carry on negotiations with Microsoft about making Bing! as a default search engine in their devices instead of Google's one. Maybe Steve Ballmer will become a new friend of Steve Jobs?