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> Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold

> Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold whatsoever, it was decided that Google would buy Android. And Android would be open source. This is blatantly false. Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced.

rarepostinlurkr 13y ago
Almost exactly a year after they bought Android, Schmidt joined the Apple board of directors. The iPhone certainly was in development some time prior to its announcement.
- Shooti 13y ago
  Schmidt joined the Apple board August 29th 2006: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric-Schmidt-Joins-Apples-Board-of-Directors.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric... Public iPhone announcement was January 9th 2007: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-th... Even with a conspiracy angle, a three month head start isn't much.
hackula1 13y ago
Android clearly went in a different direction post-iPhone.
- saiyan 13y ago
  Agreed. All those videos of Android demo or prototype units clearly showed Android was a Blackberry clone (just look at that tiny touchpad for navigating around Android OS) and changed its design direction after iPhone made its appearance.
  - bookwormAT 13y ago
    nonesense. Android is a software platform that companies can build sofware and devices on. Android is not a device, and it's not an "operating system" in the sense that people use this word today. It is a fundament that you can build an operating system with, and a cross platform that allows applications run on different software, as long as this software is based on Android. If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment. If everyone has a Blackberry, you want to show that you can make a software for Blackberrys based on Android. If everyone is hyped on digital cameras, you show a software and ui for such a camera. Android used to have 3 prototypes in its early stages: a blackberry type, a tablet-type device, and the device that later became the Tmobile G1, the first android phone. The platform never changed course, and it clearly never was a Blackberry clone.
    - rsynnott 13y ago
      Note that the HTC G1 didn't have a software keyboard at first; it was a (non-multi)-touch device, but you were meant to use the physical keyboard for all text entry until Android 1.5
    - lttlrck 13y ago
      "If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment." I'm not so sure about that. Blackberry didn't do that, and neither did Apple...
      - bookwormAT 13y ago
        Not sure I understand your comment. Neither Blackberry nor Apple developed a cross platform technology meant to run different hardware/software configurations. So of course they did not demonstrate how a platform runs on such configurations.
objclxt 13y ago
> Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced. Not only, as has already been pointed out, did the UI change, but if you look at the Android architecture it's clearly evolved along an very different path to iOS. I remember when the first Android SDK came out the programming manual made it very clear to developers that we weren't to expect devices to always have discrete GPUs or touch-screens.
Zigurd 13y ago
In fact, Google was concerned about Microsoft more-strongly binding Windows Mobile (Windows Phone came later) to their Web ecosystem. Microsoft was working on Windows Live Search, which would later be replaced by Bing. At the time, Windows Mobile was the epitome of a modern mobile OS. It had a real(ish) browser and a VM-based app runtime for a modern (C#) language (albeit optional and not nearly as tightly integrated with OS middleware as in Android). Google saw that an ecosystem such as Windows Live is much more critical to a mobile device than it is to a desktop PC. The nature of Android more closely reflects the threat from Microsoft than from iPhone.

rarepostinlurkr 13y ago

Almost exactly a year after they bought Android, Schmidt joined the Apple board of directors. The iPhone certainly was in development some time prior to its announcement.

Shooti 13y ago
Schmidt joined the Apple board August 29th 2006: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric-Schmidt-Joins-Apples-Board-of-Directors.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric... Public iPhone announcement was January 9th 2007: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-th... Even with a conspiracy angle, a three month head start isn't much.

hackula1 13y ago

Android clearly went in a different direction post-iPhone.

saiyan 13y ago
Agreed. All those videos of Android demo or prototype units clearly showed Android was a Blackberry clone (just look at that tiny touchpad for navigating around Android OS) and changed its design direction after iPhone made its appearance.
- bookwormAT 13y ago
  nonesense. Android is a software platform that companies can build sofware and devices on. Android is not a device, and it's not an "operating system" in the sense that people use this word today. It is a fundament that you can build an operating system with, and a cross platform that allows applications run on different software, as long as this software is based on Android. If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment. If everyone has a Blackberry, you want to show that you can make a software for Blackberrys based on Android. If everyone is hyped on digital cameras, you show a software and ui for such a camera. Android used to have 3 prototypes in its early stages: a blackberry type, a tablet-type device, and the device that later became the Tmobile G1, the first android phone. The platform never changed course, and it clearly never was a Blackberry clone.
  - rsynnott 13y ago
    Note that the HTC G1 didn't have a software keyboard at first; it was a (non-multi)-touch device, but you were meant to use the physical keyboard for all text entry until Android 1.5
  - lttlrck 13y ago
    "If you want to show off what Android can do, you put it on all kinds of devices that people are using at the moment." I'm not so sure about that. Blackberry didn't do that, and neither did Apple...
    - bookwormAT 13y ago
      Not sure I understand your comment. Neither Blackberry nor Apple developed a cross platform technology meant to run different hardware/software configurations. So of course they did not demonstrate how a platform runs on such configurations.

objclxt 13y ago

> Google bought Android in 2005, two years before the iPhone was announced. Not only, as has already been pointed out, did the UI change, but if you look at the Android architecture it's clearly evolved along an very different path to iOS. I remember when the first Android SDK came out the programming manual made it very clear to developers that we weren't to expect devices to always have discrete GPUs or touch-screens.

Zigurd 13y ago

In fact, Google was concerned about Microsoft more-strongly binding Windows Mobile (Windows Phone came later) to their Web ecosystem. Microsoft was working on Windows Live Search, which would later be replaced by Bing. At the time, Windows Mobile was the epitome of a modern mobile OS. It had a real(ish) browser and a VM-based app runtime for a modern (C#) language (albeit optional and not nearly as tightly integrated with OS middleware as in Android). Google saw that an ecosystem such as Windows Live is much more critical to a mobile device than it is to a desktop PC. The nature of Android more closely reflects the threat from Microsoft than from iPhone.