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Don't forget, by the way, that when Steve Jobs left Apple to found a new company in a line of business perilously close to Apple's he took a number of important
by leoc 13y ago
Don't forget, by the way, that when Steve Jobs left Apple to found a new company in a line of business perilously close to Apple's he took a number of important Apple people with him, despite giving a misleading promise not to do so.
- MBCook 13y agoJobs had a personal scorched-earth vendetta against Google ever since they stabbed him in the back with Android (as he seems to have viewed it). I imagine if he thought there was any way he could accomplish it he would have banned Google employees from buying Apple products or getting within 1000 feet of an Apple store.
- doktrin 13y agoYour comment doesn't apply here. Android was released in 2008 and these emails were written in 2006. This is not correspondence between companies at war. On the contrary, Apple was leveraging their strategic partnership with Google to block the hires.
- smacktoward 13y agoGoogle acquired Android Inc. in 2005: http://www.webcitation.org/5wk7sIvVb http://www.webcitation.org/5wk7sIvVb So it was before the shape of Google's mobile ambitions became clear, but the acquisition made it pretty obvious that Google had some kind of mobile ambitions.
- doktrin 13y agoThere is nothing to indicate Google & Apple relationships soured before 2007, when Android was unveiled. Prior to that, by all public accounts they enjoyed a relatively amicable partnership. Moreover, simply having a mobile ambition isn't that big of a deal in and of itself. Jobs viewed the close imitation of iOS features as being tantamount to theft. I'm thinking of grid layout, multitouch, swipe to unlock, etc. This is, at least by his own account, what lay behind all the "thermonuclear war" hyperbole.
- ben1040 13y agoYep. Recall even that Eric Schmidt was on hand for the iPhone reveal in 2007 and went on stage to tout the device's integration with Google services.
- adamio 13y agoDefinitely a good reason why he would be paranoid about his employees doing the same; the wage suppression it seems is a negative side effect
- leoc 13y agoTo a large extent they're two sides of the same coin, though, since you persuade key employees not to leave (partly) by increasing their compensation.