Jobs and Schmidt shake hands at iPhone launch in January 2007
The increasing rivalry between Apple and Google has been in the spotlight recently and now The New York Times has published a four page report on the ongoing relationship between to the two mammoth corporations.
The article covers many details of the increasing number of spats, starting out by detailing Apple’s suit against HTC which many believe is a wider attack against Google and its Android smartphone operating system.
At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.
“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Mr. Jobs told Apple employees during an all-hands meeting shortly after the public introduction of the iPad in January, according to two employees who were there and heard the presentation. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”
The report offers some details of meetings that were described as “fierce” and heated”.
At one particularly heated meeting in 2008 on Google’s campus, Mr. Jobs angrily told Google executives that if they deployed a version of multitouch — the popular iPhone feature that allows users to control their devices with flicks of their fingers — he would sue.
The New York Times also interesting gives some background on the acquisition of AdMob by Google and how Apple had been bidding on the mobile advertising company at the time. Apple later acquired another firm Quattro.
Illustration of Steve Jobs, left, and Eric Schmidt. Credit: Daniel Adel (Courtesy of New York Times)
Last fall, Apple made a formal bid to acquire AdMob, a rapidly growing mobile advertising company, for $600 million. AdMob specializes in developing ads that run inside mobile phone applications, like those on the iPhone.
While Apple conducted due diligence on the deal, AdMob agreed to a 45-day “no shop” provision, a routine clause that prevented the start-up from offering itself for sale to others, according to three people briefed on the negotiations. But after Apple inexplicably let 45 days pass without consummating its offer, Google pounced.
On talking to both Google and Apple employees the New York TImes discovered that the rivalry is “intense” and many believe that a peacemaker is “sorely needed”. Bill Campbell who serves on Apple’s board has said to have been attempting to “smooth over the problems”.
While Mr. Campbell has tried to be a diplomat and smooth over the problems between Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt, the task hasn’t been easy. Mr. Campbell declined to comment for this article, but people briefed on the matter say that throughout last fall, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt each lobbied Mr. Campbell to sever his connection with the other’s company, at times even giving him ultimatums to do so.
Finally, Mr. Campbell was forced to choose, and according to a person with knowledge of the situation, he dropped his formal responsibilities at Google, although he is still informally mentoring executives there.
