Steve Jobs isn’t exactly the kind of guy to let a grudge go. That’s why when Google released Android and it featured a “pinch to zoom” feature just like iOS, Jobs decided to make sure that Apple board member and Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn’t steal any of Cupertino’s other bright ideas… like the original iPad.
So says Steven Levy, whose forthcoming book In The Plex is the result of two years inside the Google campus.
Problems came when Google bought and started work on the Android mobile phone system.
When he saw features like the ‘pinch-and-zoom’ control to look at websites and images during a visit to Mountain View, California, the home of ‘Googleplex’, he was apparently furious.
He believed the best ideas from the iPhone had been stolen.
Mr Schmidt stayed on the board at Apple but Mr Jobs somehow managed to keep the development of the iPad hidden from him.
It’s always amazing to me that the rest of the industry seems to have been caught with their pants down by the iPad, even though it was an open secret that Apple was working on a tablet for years. At least this explains why Google didn’t anticipate iPad: their CEO was convinced that if Apple had anything to show, he’d see it first just by dint of being on the board.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
50 responses to “New Book Says Steve Jobs Hid The iPad From Google As “Pinch-To-Zoom Payback””
Keep your friends close and you enemies closer.
Piracy was and will always be the most profitable business. You don’t need to be intelligent or creative, you just need not to have a code of ethics.
In this industry, you can call it Microsoft, Google, the whole friggin China… and in the world’s history you can just call it England. :-)
Yup. Sergey Brin and Larry Page should drown themselves in a thimble of water.
How sad that a premier software company is nothing but a bunch of cheaters.
Beware of friends who will gladly stab you in the back and take what is yours. Friends like Eric The Evil. Steve and Apple need to take the iPad and shove it up Google’s backside for backstabbing Apple with that freakin’ Android OS crap. I hope the iPad 2 outsells every Honeycomb tablet by at least 10 to 1 and sends every iPad wannabe copycat back to peddling their crappy netbooks.
I hope Steve turns half of the Maiden N.C. data center into a humongous search engine and steals massive market share from Google in search for unleashing that darn free Android OS. Payback will be a biyatch.
OK, no one loves their iPad more than me… but portions of multi-touch are common sense. You can’t exactly trademark touch screens and I can’t think of any other way to zoom in or out of a picture or web page without using that motion or some form of it. iPhone/iPad will always be first – that doesn’t make everyone else stealing.
YOU SAID IT ALL!!!
Oh MAN!!! are you ever right!!!
CHEATERS?…
No, they’re crooks!
Google’s is a culture of theft. Starts at the top.
Apple’s is a culture of innovation. Starts at the top, too.
Google always Evil and CopyCat. Google has nothing pioneer but copy others.
Keep in mind that this is a book being written about Google while on their campus. It is not a guaranteed unbiased view.
It is possible that yes Steve kept the tablet very close, because of a number of folks from outside companies being on the board and it wasn’t targeted at Eric at all.
And equally perhaps Steve didn’t care as much as they are painting it. After all, board member or not, Apple could and likely would sue
correct. i hate google, for that i switch to bing. android sucks.
so by jobs not talking about a tablet doesn’t mean he invented “it”. Sorry, no. Apple does gadgets, google does the web.
where in the article does it say that apple invented the tablet?
troll
Remember how cool Google was when it launched? Remember all the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ at their “we’re the good guys” stance? How shit changes. Now I see them as the single most pervasive company on the planet, they supply data to government agencies, they have more information on users than ever before and they have NO competition. I used to like google but for the past 2-3 years my views have changed. They have become the very thing they said they would fight against. They are the monolith.
ahh, well look at it this way, what kind of innovations has windows and PC based programmers made lately… not much… pinch zoom is innovative… some dumb ass out there would have made a pop up scroll bar to zoom… something that gets in the way and looks stupid…
Grudge, my foot! Schmidt was engaged in industrial espionage, any CEO worth their salt would have kept things from someone like that. To those bone-heads that are stating that apple innovates while others “cheat,” may I remind you that the All-Father Jobs himself stated: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” I’m quite certain that apple employs their own share of spies, and this is perfectly fine by me. Apple is simply the best of the best, I’d buy nothing else. On a different note: Cult of Mac – I can’t post comments from my iPhone. Really? I have to drag out the Mac just to put a few words on your website. Of all the sites that should be iPhone friendly, this is just plain sad.
Herr Brownlee, Viele Grüsse aus Amerika, hoffentlich gefällt es Ihnen in meiner Heimat. Berlin ist doch sehr schön, was?
Come on Apple! Bust out a search engine to blow them all away! Then Eric can stick THAT in his search engine and SUCK IT!
Google is the new Microsoft!
Before google, there was already yahoo. Google is just really good in imitating and owning it.
Karma will catch up with google eventually. It already has started. Bing is getting more and more popular, and android seems to be falling apart.
How is this holding a grudge? Backstabbing board member betrays trust by stealing key product feature, so he is not told of future products. It would have been pretty stupid to do otherwise.
I think the jury is still out on Sergey Brin and Larry Page. I had a lot of respect for Google’s accomplishments and values after they founded the company. The true dirtbag here is Eric Schmidt, who is little more than a sleazy pencil pusher. With him out of the CEO position, Brin and Page have an opportunity to return the company to its “don’t be evil” values. That may be a naive hope – only time will tell.
Thanks, Captain Hindsight. I love when people refer to brilliant design as common sense. How come not a single competitor employed this “common sense” before Apple introduced the iPhone? For that matter, why is it that after four years, competitors STILL can’t get their wanna be touch UIs to work as well as Apple’s?
Microsoft promoted the tablet PC concept a decade before the iPad. Why is it that even today they insist that a stylus and keyboard are necessary?
In 1885, Karl Benz built his first automobile. In 1892, Daimler built his own version of an automobile: the Daimler. They where followed by Peugeot in France and later by ford and others in the US. All this is to say that these cars were probably copycats of an original and were probably called that way back then. However, they all filled a need. People have various tastes, various needs and different buying power and different lifestyles. Also, they adhere to different phylosophies. All this to say that one single product will never suit everybody. Sorry for the Apple followers who think the whole world has to consume Apple products. Here lies the power of android opening the door to competition and giving everybody the possibility to choose what they want.
I for one, would not buy an ipad, because I need a product that fits my personality and technical expectations. I really laugh when people (including Steve Jobs himself) are refering to the plethora of third-party apps available on the IOS platform as if these apps where created by Apple. The same developpers coding for the appstore can and will code for the Android Market and we will whitness the same phenomenon that happenned for the android phones. tens of thousands of apps will be available for Honeycomb. Its inevitable.
I do agree the Apple makes great products (if you are willing to live iniside their walls). However with an android device I have the freedom to do and be what I want. I will never bash Apple nor Apple fans. They are in a specific niche and Apple fills it perfectly. Some people don’t understand technology, have no clue about it and just need to “use” a product. Some people are influenced only by marketing. Some follow a trend. Some know exactly what they do and what they want. Nnow that competition is wide open and choice is wide spread, all will find the product they are looking for.