> sure they could have been developing it earlier, Actually there is evidence they had developed it much earlier. Some people examining the source tree found

> sure they could have been developing it earlier, Actually there is evidence they had developed it much earlier. Some people examining the source tree found it was basically present in the G1 but commented out. They were even able to enable it with some crazy hacks - more info: http://openhandsetmagazine.com/2009/01/the-story-of-multitouch-on-android-g1/ http://openhandsetmagazine.com/2009/01/the-story-of-multitou... > the following January google launched the nexus one with multitouch No I'm pretty sure the Nexus launched without multitouch; it was enabled in a release (2.1 update 1, a couple of months after launch). Again, an indication that even as late as January 2010 Google was still holding back - whether it was out of fear or through some hope of reconciliation - no idea. But I suspect the latter. Android was still small enough at that point that getting barred from the iPhone wholesale would have been horrible. I think we're more or less agreeing here. I guess my only point is that to talk about any one incident in the chain in isolation is highly misleading.