In a recent interview, Google CEO Larry Page had a few interesting things to say regarding Apple's ongoing battle with Android and the extent to which Android's existence truly bothered Steve Jobs.
In a recent interview with BusinessWeek, Google CEO Larry Page had a few interesting things to say regarding Apple’s ongoing battle with Android and the extent to which Android’s existence truly bothered Steve Jobs.
In his biography, Jobs famously said was willing to go “thermonuclear” to destroy Android.
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs told Walter Isaacson in his biography. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”
But when asked about Jobs’ fury regarding Android, Page responded that he thought it was “just for show.”
I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better…
An interesting take, that quite frankly, I’m not buying.
Steve Jobs had a notoriously long memory and short temper. If you crossed him, ripped off one of his products, he wasn’t likely to ever forget about it.
Is it any wonder why Jobs, after being ousted from Apple in 1985 by John Sculley, never spoke to the former Pepsi CEO again? Or how about how Gizmodo curiously stopped receiving invitations to Apple’s special media events following their iPhone 4 expose? And in a more parallel example, Jobs never had the nicest of things to say about Windows and was quick, even in the 2000s, to bluntly state that Microsoft had ripped off the Mac.
Put simply, when it came to business and intellectualy property in particular, Jobs wasn’t the forgive and forget type. His anger was real, and never for show.
That said, are we really supposed to believe that Jobs, a man who was driven in large part by raw emotion, concocted this whole Android battle-cry to rally the troops?
Even Walter Isaacson noted in his Steve Jobs biography that he had never seen Jobs angrier than when he was discussing HTC and Android.
But yet, Page articulates that Jobs was merely looking for a hollow reason to inspire the company.
Talk about a real reality distortion field.
The real takeaway from Page’s quote is that Page genuinely believe that Android is in no way a rip off of iOS. From Page’s standpoint, there was no logical reason for Apple to go after Android, thereby meaning that Apple’s legal actions weren’t rooted in protecting intellectual property rights, but rather as a motivational ploy. A ploy that’s currently costing Apple hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees
It’s quite laughable, really.
Page also manages to stick in a well placed jab at Apple, noting that their efforts to take on Android are illustrative of the company not aiming higher. Apple, Page insinuates, should focus more on “making the world better” than on preoccupying themselves with what Google’s up to. Which, of course, is a tad Ironic given that Apple is currently arguing quite vigorously in a number of jurisdictions that Android is the end result of Google looking at them and “slavishly copying” Apple’s iOS.
That aside, the rest of the Page interview is quite interesting as the Google CEO touches on a number of interesting topics from Google+ to Google’s place as an innovation trendsetter.
via BusinessWeek
