Apple and Google once had what “looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Brad Stone and Miguel Helft report for The New York Times. “Today, such warmth is in short supply. Mr. Jobs, Mr. Schmidt and their companies are now engaged in a gritty battle royale over the future and shape of mobile computing and cellphones, with implications that are reverberating across the digital landscape.”
“In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted over acquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt have taken shots at each other’s companies in the media and in private exchanges with employees,” Stone and Helft report.
“While the discord between Apple and Google is in part philosophical and involves enormous financial stakes, the battle also has deeply personal overtones and echoes the ego-fueled fisticuffs that have long characterized technology industry feuds,” Stone and Helft report.
“Yet according to interviews with two dozen industry watchers, Silicon Valley investors and current and former employees at both companies — most of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs or business relationships — the clash between Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs offers an unusually vivid display of enmity and ambition,” Stone and Helft report. “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.”
Stone and Helft report, “One well-connected Silicon Valley investor, who did not want to be identified talking about the Google-Apple feud, says he is stunned by the level of rancor he’s witnessed. ‘It’s World War III. Amazing animosity is motivating two of the most powerful people in the industry,’ he says. ‘This is emotional. This is the biggest ego battle in history. It’s incendiary.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This time around, there’s no poorly-written contract signed by an unprepared sugared water salesbozo.” Wherever Google infringes on their IP, Apple should make them pay dearly.
Google’s going to rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them.
• We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs when unveiling iPhone, January 9, 2007
• We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP, in which case we will go after them. We will not stand for having our IP ripped-off and we will use any weapons at our disposal [to stop it]. – Apple COO Tim Cook, January 21, 2009
@ChrissyOne
And Apple didn’t invent the mouse neither the GUI, but for all intents and purposes, they are their “inventors” for being the first ones to actually use those two technologies in a meaningful way to the market
“I can’t believe people don’t grasp the concept of protecting what you created with your money.”
What a dull statement. Just imagine if Edison had been allowed to broadly patent “an electrically charged light emitting glass bulb” how that would have affected history. Or if the piston had been given a patent, or the geared wheel. We simply would not have cars or airplanes today as every back yard innovator would have been sued or levied into oblivion by patent claims.
A recent inventor developed a powered unicycle (“The Uno”) and in doing so discovered it may never be produced due to a myriad patent claims, over the mechanics and software, that could take up to 25 years to sort out. Patents today are stifling innovation at every turn and companies are acting like Mafia in their efforts to protect their turf. Companies like Apple should be able to patent the entire form and concept of a product, but not all the physical workings, and even then, only for a limited period of time.
@ lukeskymac
Uh, no actually. And it doesn’t save you from being wrong. You don’t just get squatters rights for technologies.
Apple is in control of many aspects of multi-touch due to its licenses and patents, but that doesn’t change that fact that they didn’t invent it.
Words mean things.
@ Brau
How little understanding of human behavior you have. If there is no incentive or payout for doing something then people won’t waste their time to invent things just for bragging rights. You want people to spend time and money to bring a product to market and then just give it away. That will never work. That’s why the Soviet Union failed and other such communal societies. There is nothing wrong with licensing your inventions but giving it away is just stupid.
@Brau
I’m not disputing that the current patent system is highly flawed, the software aspects, in particular. But did you actually consider checking your history when you used the lightbulb as an example?
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledisonpatents.htm
At http://edison.rutgers.edu/patents.htm you will learn that:
“Edison executed the first of his 1,093 successful U.S. patent applications on 13 October 1868, at the age of 21. He filed an estimated 500–600 unsuccessful or abandoned applications as well.”
See http://edison.rutgers.edu/patents/00223898.PDF. It is an incandescent lightbulb…
@Mac4lfe
To be fair, some people do give their intellectual property away after patenting it. It is a noble action and that spirit, if it were to spread significantly, would greatly enhance the potential of humankind to advance technologically. The fact that you would label such people as “stupid” says much (and none of it flattering) about your character.
Unfortunately, there are not many truly altruistic people around. I submit that the flaws in human nature are what prevent communism from being generally successful as a social model. The approach, itself, is logical if your objective is to advance the community and not the individual.
How this makes for strange bedfellows…
MS and Apple are supposedly talking about making Bing the default search engine on the iPhone. Not that I’m an MS fan by any means, but it is so ironic that this “war” has brought MS and Apple together. Recently as last week, Monkey Boy Ballmer was caught talking about Apple in a surprisingly positive light, praising their technologies (I believe he was talking about the iPhone). Regardless, you don’t hear anything positive about Apple coming from his mouth.
My how the times they are a-changing…….
Please – like Apple hasn’t stolen anything from anyone else? Google innovates, just like everyone else does. There were versions of multi-touch that Google worked on before the iPhone was even patented.
I’m supposed to hate Google now? MDN needs to take a chill pill. Competition is what drives innovation. If Apple removes Google form the iPhone and runs to Microsoft and Bing, I’ll stop using my iPhone in protest…
Google is AWESOME at search and should develop that. They are becoming like MS in that they are trying out too many things. I don’t want another search engine.
Google had played deaf, dumb, and blind for years to please the Chinese government, and not until their software got allegedly attacked that they suddenly became “holier than thou” and played the victim card to get the free world to come to their aid. What a cowardly evil company they are, only care about human and privacy rights when their greed and business interests being threaten.
I do not condone what the Chinese did (if true), but it couldn’t happen to a nicer company. Hey Google, what goes around comes around. Let it be a lesson to all who think privacy rights and protection of private information are Google primary concern.
It looks like the Chinese are going to stand their ground and give Google the boot in spite of the pathetic victim card they have been playing in public.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see that backstabber Schmidt on his hands and knees begging the Chinese for a second chance with a promise to do whatever it takes to please the Chinese even more this time around.
Hah, look at the sad little Google trolls swarming all over this article.
Apple does jackshit to lock consumers into its platform, it doesn’t draft anti-competitive license agreements, it doesn’t leverage proprietary formats in an attempt to destroy all alternatives, and it employ astroturfers. But here we have cries of “Apple is Microsoft now!”.
Sorry, no. Microsoft is Microsoft now.
As for the company becoming the most like Microsoft, that would be Google. They have dreams of world domination, they’ve started backstabbing their partners with glee, they’ve lifted their Android strategy right from Windows Mobile, and they very clearly do employ astroturfers.
At this point, a fitting nickname for Google would be Microsoft Junior.
What they need to do is cut the bullshit and get back to their core competencies or else their brand will lose its value, of which Android and Nexus One have already seriously cost them. They can start by fixing their increasingly broken search engine.
* and it doesn’t employ astroturfers. Durr.
@KingMel
You said:
“To be fair, some people do give their intellectual property away after patenting it. It is a noble action and that spirit, if it were to spread significantly, would greatly enhance the potential of humankind to advance technologically. The fact that you would label such people as “stupid” says much (and none of it flattering) about your character.”
How much of your own patented intellectual property have you given away?
My guess is that most people who feel that Apple should give it’s intellectual away and not protect it, would be horrified if their employers asked the to work for free. Those who don’t see the connection are naive and clueless.
I think Google ripped Apple off and I don’t like that.
I hope Apple crushes Google.
I would be happy to use Apple search, not Bing.
Except for google and microsoft
It’s called competition and sometimes it can get dirty? Has google ripped off any of Apple’s IP?
I’m a consumer and I could care less about legal battles, I just want the best products and choice, let them feud it out if they want. Who cares.
@Mac4lfe
Thank God Tim Berners-Lee didn’t hear you say that years ago, otherwise you might not have this platform to communicate on!
I haven’t ditched Apple yet. But it is inevitable. I don’t like where they are going.
Some of the posters need to be clear what they are talking about. Anyone can use multi-touch, the problem is when these companies are using Apple’s multi-touch metaphors and algorithms instead of doing their own homework. It is the difference between Xerox making a GUI to handle the Unix directory file system, and the desktop metaphor Apple created to make the GUI more intuitive.
Google lacks focus, they are trying to be in too many markets at once. They should stick to server engines and search software, and leave consumer electronics alone.
Well, go on, start ruing! -Stewie, Family Guy, “Mind Over Murder”
Patenting invention and exercising right to defend one’s patents isn’t an all-or-nothing affair with Apple. If anyone here would care to turn off their selective memory for a moment, they’ll remember that Apple invented FireWire, then turned it over to the IEEE standards body and made it a public standard, which benefited everyone (ask any person working in digital video field). That is only one of several examples where Apple invented technology and decided that it would be much more beneficial for the world to make that technology a global standard and make it available to everyone who wants to use it.
Multi-touch, however, is definitely NOT such a technology. It is a unique set of proprietary UI conventions that Apple invented for their own commercial use. There are plenty of equally competitive (from the perspective of function) alternative UI conventions (buttons, joystick navigation, single touch, etc). The touch interface for mobile platforms has been in existence for almost twenty years (since Newton), and in the mainstream since original Palm Pilot (and Windows CE). They can continue to exist and evolve, but not by taking the ideas developed by Apple and applying them as original.
Apple has been generally fairly generous company when it comes to inventing some technology and then turning it over to the community. They have earned their right to NOT do that with everything they invent. Multi-touch GUI is one of those inventions. They should be allowed to earn return on that massive investment in developing it.
I find it amusing that people are comparing Google to Microsoft, when it’s really Apple that should be compared to Microsoft.
Anyone of you who says “does jackshit to lock consumers into its platform” is smoking something. Last time I checked, you can’t run Mac OS on anything other then an Apple product, [RIP Psystar] you can’t run iTunes on anything other then an iPod music player [RIP Pre] and you can’t even freely program apps for the iPhone [RIP anything deemed inappropriate by Apple].
Apple is trying to take over the world and they want to make sure they crush anyone who tries to compete with them. Wake up and smell the apples…
Oh, and their once superior hardware quality has gone down the drain. It took me 5 (FIVE!) different iMac 27″ orders to get a working machine. Five times I had to back-up my data and move it around from machine to machine disrupting my life.
My Rev. A Macbook Air still heats up and shuts down when I try and run any intensive video. [known problem with no real fix from Apple].
My Time Capsule is dead after 18 months (just like thousands of others) because of poor design that results in internal components frying from heat damage [known problem that Apple refuses too fix].
My Apple TV is a joke with no real support from Apple who calls it a “hobby.” I’m so glad I invested my money in something they don’t even take that seriously.
Snow Leopard killed half my software and I still don’t have working printer drivers. Sound familiar? Oh, and a bug in the software (the day they released it) killed all my files because my profile got deleted…good thing I had so many back-ups lying around from ordering 5 iMacs…
Don’t be mistaken who is looking more and more like Microsoft.
@playnice
Only a fool would keep buying products from a company that has failed them as many times as Apple has failed you.
FACTS ARE. “YOU ARE A TROLL”
And as far as your failure rate “You rank in the ignore my 13 year old mind”
Save yourself the time and lies and spend some time with you Android phone and google love before it is all gone.
Apple haters are out in force, but every one needs a break from reality to laugh, and “playnice” the 7 other folks with me are ROLFL at your post.
I’m a Troll for being an Apple fanatic, probably longer then you’ve been alive, but being disappointed in the direction the company has taken both on the quality, and ideology front?
It’s people like you who make the debate so meaningless because all you do is sling insults.
Sorry for having an informed opinion. It must be hard on you.