Image Credit: Daniel Adel, New York Times

Nothing sells papers (or ads) like turning a little corporate competition into something personal. Case in point, a New York Times piece from the weekend titled "Apple's Spat With Google Is Getting Personal," that opened with this rather ominous, one-sentence paragraph:
"It looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
Cue the orchestra. The lengthy piece chronicling the relationship between the Silicon Valley titans was formed by two dozen interviews with industry watchers, investors, and current and former employees covering a timeline spread that began with Google and Apple working in harmony to prevent Microsoft's domination of online services and mobile devices. It ends with Apple's patent lawsuit against HTC that reeks of a proxy battle against Android and Google. According to the NYT then, the heart of the dispute is betrayal, or Jobs' belief that Schmidt (a former Apple board member) "picked his pocket" by developing cellphones that "physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone." Here's how one especially feisty encounter is described:
"At one particularly heated meeting in 2008 on Google's campus, Mr. Jobs angrily told Google executives that if they deployed a version of multitouch - the popular iPhone feature that allows users to control their devices with flicks of their fingers - he would sue. Two people briefed on the meeting described it as "fierce" and "heated.""
And that's just the beginning. Read the rest after the break.Continue reading Apple vs. Google gets personal: "Steve Jobs simply hates Eric Schmidt" (video)
Apple vs. Google gets personal: "Steve Jobs simply hates Eric Schmidt" (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.


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