Will Steve Jobs’ Final Vendetta Haunt Google?
By Michael Liedtke
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Google can only hope that Steve Jobs’ final vendetta doesn’t haunt the Internet search leader from his grave.
The depths of Jobs’ antipathy toward Google leaps out of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Apple’s co-founder. The book goes on sale Monday, less than three weeks after Jobs’ long battle with pancreatic cancer culminated in his Oct. 5 death. The Associated Press obtained a copy Thursday.
The biography drips with Jobs’ vitriol as he discusses his belief that Google stole from Apple’s iPhone to build many of the features in Google’s Android software for rival phones.
It’s clear that the perceived theft represented an unforgiveable act of betrayal to Jobs, who had been a mentor to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and had welcomed Google’s CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, to be on Apple’s board.
Jobs retaliated with a profane manifesto during a 2010 conversation with his chosen biographer. Isaacson wrote that he never saw Jobs angrier in any of their conversations, which covered a wide variety of emotional topics during a two-year period.
After equating Android to “grand theft” of the iPhone, Jobs lobbed a series of grenades that may blow a hole in Google’s image as an innovative company on a crusade to make the world a better place.
“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 Isaacson. “I’m going to destroy Android because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death because they know they are guilty.”
Jobs then used a crude word for defecation to describe Android and other products outside of search.
Android
now represents one of the chief threats to the iPhone. Although iPhones had a head start and still draw huge lines when new models go on sale, Android devices sold twice as well in the second quarter. According to Gartner, Android’s market share grew 2 1/2 times to 43 percent, compared with 17 percent a year earlier. The iPhone’s grew as well, but by a smaller margin – to 18 percent, from 14 percent.
Both Google and Apple declined comment to The Associated Press when asked about Jobs’ remarks.
Jobs’ attack is troubling for Google on several levels.
It suggests that Apple, which has pledged to be true to Jobs’ vision, may try to derail Android in court, even if Google obtains more patent protection through its proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of phone maker Motorola Mobility Inc. The derision comes across as a bitter pill for Page and Brin, who have hailed Jobs as one of their idols. It also appears to contradict Schmidt’s repeated assertions that he remained on friendly terms with Jobs even after he resigned from Apple’s board in 2009.
Most of all, Google should be worried whether the Android brand is damaged by the withering criticism of a revered figure whose public esteem seems to have risen as friends, colleagues and customers paid tribute over the past few weeks.
“The words of cultural icons have a lot of power after death,” veteran technology analyst Rob Enderle said. “This almost sounds like a spiritual leader declaring a jihad on Android as his dying wish.”
Apple fans tend to be fiercely loyal, making it more feasible to envision an anti-Android movement taking shape like some kind of political protest, Enderle said.
It’s also possible that Jobs’ criticisms of Google may be seen as hypocritical.
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