【2010.3.12 纽约时报】Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal

triangel

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/technology/14brawl.html?pagewanted=3&ref=business


Apple sees Android phones like the Motorola Droid, right, as iPhoneclones. Google says some prototypes predate the iPhone, left.


IT looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


Three years ago, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, jogged onto a San Francisco stage to shake hands with Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, to help him unveil a transformational wonder gadget — the iPhone — before throngs of journalists and adoring fans at the annual MacWorld Expo.


Google and Apple had worked together to bring Google’s search andmapping services to the iPhone, the executives told the audience, andMr. Schmidt joked that the collaboration was so close that the two menshould simply merge their companies and call them “AppleGoo.”


“Steve, my congratulations to you,” Mr. Schmidt told his corporateally. “This product is going to be hot.” Mr. Jobs acknowledged thecompliment with an ear-to-ear smile.


Today, such warmth is in short supply. Mr. Jobs, Mr. Schmidt and theircompanies are now engaged in a gritty battle royale over the future andshape of mobile computing and cellphones, with implications that arereverberating across the digital landscape.


In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted overacquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. Mr.Jobs and Mr. Schmidt have taken shots at each other’s companies in themedia and in private exchanges with employees.


This month, Apple sued HTC,the Taiwanese maker of mobile phones that run Google’s Androidoperating system, contending that HTC had violated iPhone patents. Themove was widely seen as the beginning of a legal assault by Apple onGoogle itself, as well as an attempt to slow Google’s plans to extendits dominion to mobile devices.


Apple believes that devices like smartphones and tablets should havetightly controlled, proprietary standards and that customers shouldtake advantage of services on those gadgets with applicationsdownloaded from Apple’s own App Store.


Google, on the other hand, wants smartphones to have open,nonproprietary platforms so users can freely roam the Web for apps thatwork on many devices. Google has long feared that rivals like Microsoft or Apple or wireless carriers like Verizoncould block access to its services on devices like smartphones, whichcould soon eclipse computers as the primary gateway to the Web.Google’s promotion of Android is, essentially, an effort to control its destiny in the mobile world.


While the discord between Apple and Google is in part philosophical andinvolves enormous financial stakes, the battle also has deeply personalovertones and echoes the ego-fueled fisticuffs that have longcharacterized technology industry feuds. (Think Intel vs. A.M.D., Microsoft vs. everybody, and so on.)


Yet according to interviews with two dozen industry watchers, SiliconValley investors and current and former employees at both companies —most of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs or businessrelationships — the clash between Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs offers anunusually vivid display of enmity and ambition.


At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believesthat Google violated the alliance between the companies by producingcellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembledthe iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google pickedhis pocket.
“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phonebusiness,” Mr. Jobs told Apple employees during an all-hands meetingshortly after the public introduction of the iPadin January, according to two employees who were there and heard thepresentation. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. Wewon’t let them.”


One of these employees said Mr. Jobs returned to the topic of Googleseveral times in the session and even disparaged its slogan “Don’t beevil” with an expletive, which drew thunderous applause from hisunderlings.


Apple declined to comment for this article. Larry Page and Sergey Brin,Google’s co-founders, have openly expressed admiration for Mr. Jobs,and Google says it isn’t at war with its former ally. “Apple is avalued partner, and we have great respect for everything they have donefor technology for more than 30 years,” says Jill Hazelbaker, a Googlespokeswoman.
In a statement, Mr. Schmidt concurred. “I continue to believe, as manydo, that Steve Jobs is the best C.E.O. in the world today, and I admireApple and Steve enormously,” he wrote.


Despite such sentiments, the tech world at large is watching the battle between Apple and Google with shock and awe.               
“I’m sure it is going to get uglier,” says David B. Yoffie, a professorat Harvard Business School who has studied the tech industry fordecades. “To beat Apple, Google is going to have to be very aggressive.If they are successful, it will put price pressure on Apple and theiPhone.”


One well-connected Silicon Valley investor, who did not want to beidentified talking about the Google-Apple feud, says he is stunned bythe level of rancor he’s witnessed.

triangel

“It’s World War III. Amazing animosity is motivating two of the mostpowerful people in the industry,” he says. “This is emotional. This isthe biggest ego battle in history. It’s incendiary.”


THE fight features two Valley veterans whose styles couldn’t be moredifferent. Mr. Schmidt is a brainy technologist turned executive. He ismeasured and professorial in public, but takes pride in being tough.


Along with Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, he has infused Google with an intensecompetitiveness and an almost evangelical belief that its engineers cando just about everything better than its rivals.


Mr. Jobs, of course, is the master marketer and innovator who exertsauthoritarian control over every aspect of Apple. Since he helped tofound the company in 1976, he has been known to elevate the fightagainst rivals — first I.B.M.and Microsoft, and later Dell — into

corporate calls to battle, usingthe specter of the enemy to motivate employees and sharpen Apple’simage in the public eye.


But in this latest battle with Google, his actions appear to beunusually emotional. In filing the lawsuit over Android phones, hepositioned his company as an aggrieved victim finally standing up tothe playground bully. “We can sit by and watch competitors steal ourpatented inventions, or we can do something about it,” he said in astatement when the suit was filed. “We’ve decided to do something aboutit.”
Google said that day that it wasn’t a party to the suit but that itwould “stand behind” HTC. And, privately, some Google executives saythey worry that the lawsuit could hold back Android, which is alsobeing built into tablets that could rival the iPad.


Mr. Schmidt hasn’t shied away from taking public swipes at Apple, either. In January at the World Economic Forum,when asked what he thought of Apple’s new iPad, due to go on sale earlynext month, he joked to reporters: “You might want to tell me thedifference between a large phone and a tablet.”


Although Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt both began working in Silicon Valleyin the late 1970s, their paths rarely crossed. But by 2001, with Mr.Jobs back at Apple and Mr. Schmidt running Google, they shared asingular mission: limiting Microsoft’s hegemony to the personalcomputer and ensuring that Bill Gates didn’t dominate the frontier of online services and mobile devices.


When Mr. Schmidt was invited to join Apple’s board in 2006, he and Mr. Jobs lavished praise on each other.


Behind the scenes, closer bonds between the two companies had formed.Google’s co-founders, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, considered Mr. Jobs amentor and, according to a former Apple executive, were regularvisitors to Mr. Jobs’s office in Cupertino, Calif., during Google’searly days.


Mr. Brin was also known to take long walks with Mr. Jobs near his housein Palo Alto, and in the nearby foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains.According to colleagues, they discussed the future of technology andplanned some joint ventures that never came to fruition — like acollaborative effort to develop a version of Apple’s Safari browser forWindows.


Another former Google executive said Mr. Page and Mr. Brin “spoke veryopenly about their admiration for Jobs and how he’s a role model forthem as they grow into becoming executives.” Mr. Page and Mr. Brindeclined to be interviewed. People close to the company say they aredisappointed that the relationship with Apple has soured.


Still, they and other Google executives see the company’s push to openup the industry and to succeed in mobile computing as too important tosacrifice just to placate Mr. Jobs.


BY all accounts, Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs were never close friends. Butthey dined together on several occasions, according to a formerassociate of Mr. Schmidt’s, and Mr. Jobs never hesitated to call Mr.Schmidt directly to voice his opinions. Mr. Schmidt, several friendssay, relished his position on Apple’s board and the proximity it gavehim to one of the most famous figures in American business.
But it didn’t take long for friction to emerge. When Apple beganselling the iPhone in 2007, Google was already quietly ramping upefforts to develop Android, its own smartphone operating system.


Two years earlier, Google had acquired the start-up that was developingAndroid. At the time, the move was largely aimed at Microsoft and meantto ensure that it didn’t wind up controlling the market for mobiledevices. But when Microsoft faltered in the emerging smartphone market,and other companies like Research In Motion and then Apple began todominate instead, Google continued to push ahead with Android and itsvision of a more open mobile phone ecosystem.

triangel

As Google’s plans took shape, Apple and Google executives either met inperson or spoke on the phone on multiple occasions about Apple’sconcern about Android, executives on both sides say.


Many of those meetings turned confrontational, according to peoplefamiliar with the discussions, with Mr. Jobs often accusing Google ofstealing iPhone features. Google executives said that Android’sfeatures were based on longstanding ideas already circulating in theindustry and that some Android prototypes predated the iPhone.


At one particularly heated meeting in 2008 on Google’s campus, Mr. Jobsangrily told Google executives that if they deployed a version ofmultitouch — the popular iPhone feature that allows users to controltheir devices with flicks of their fingers — he would sue. Two peoplebriefed on the meeting described it as “fierce” and “heated.”


While Google listened to Apple, it rarely backed down. “I don’t thinkthey made many accommodations,” says a former Google executive who wasbriefed on the discussions. “Google is not a company that isparticularly afraid of anyone, including Apple.”


Google did proceed cautiously with Android, at least initially. Thefirst versions of the software, which appeared on devices in 2008,didn’t feature multitouch. The phones were slow and unwieldy, andGoogle insiders joked that they looked like bricks.


But as Android-powered devices kept improving, Apple became moreconcerned. When Mr. Jobs returned to work from a prolonged health leavelast year, he faced an array of emerging Android-powered phones likethe MotorolaDroid, with sleeker lines, improved performance and, like the otherAndroid phones, the ability to run multiple applications at the sametime.


Highlighting the escalating rivalry, Verizon ran ads for the Droid thattook aim at the iPhone with the tagline “Everything iDon’t ... DroidDoes.”


AS tensions mounted between Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs, their infightingbecame more public. When Google tried to get its voice mail managementprogram, Google Voice, onto the iPhone, Apple blocked the effort lastJuly, citing privacy concerns. Then, last August, Mr. Schmidt stepped downfrom Apple’s board, prompted in part by regulatory concerns over tiesbetween the two companies but also because Apple said his position hadbecome untenable.


When Mr. Jobs announced Mr. Schmidt’s departure from the board, henoted that with Android and plans for a computer operating system,Google was “unfortunately” entering more of Apple’s “core business.”


Then a wrestling match began on the acquisition front.


Last fall, Apple made a formal bid to acquire AdMob, a rapidly growingmobile advertising company, for $600 million. AdMob specializes indeveloping ads that run inside mobile phone applications, like those onthe iPhone.


While Apple conducted due diligence on the deal, AdMob agreed to a45-day “no shop” provision, a routine clause that prevented thestart-up from offering itself for sale to others, according to threepeople briefed on the negotiations. But after Apple inexplicably let 45days pass without consummating its offer, Google pounced.


Their interest piqued by Apple’s pursuit of the start-up, Mr. Schmidt,along with Mr. Page, Mr. Brin and other Google executives, beganintensely courting Omar Hamoui, AdMob’s young chief executive. AdMob,the Google guys argued, belonged in their corporate family becauseGoogle — unlike Apple — was an old pro in advertising. They alsopromised that AdMob employees would be able to cash out stock optionssooner than Apple’s deal would have allowed. It also didn’t hurt thatGoogle was willing to pay a 25 percent premium over Apple’s offer.


Three days after the no-shop provision expired, Google agreed to buyAdMob — putting a whopping $750 million price tag on a four-year-oldcompany with modest revenue. Jilted and angry, Mr. Jobs speculated thatAdMob might have violated its legal obligations, with help from Google,according to two people briefed on the fallout from the negotiations.


(Neither AdMob nor Google would comment on any aspect of the process.The acquisition is being reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission forpossible antitrust problems.)


One executive familiar with Google’s acquisitions strategy said thecompany was willing to pay a large premium for AdMob simply to keep thecompany out of Apple’s arms. “There is no way AdMob would have gotten$750 million if he wasn’t worried that it would end up in the hands ofSteve,” the executive said. “Are they going to get $750 million in cashflow back? No way.”

triangel

Apple rebounded quickly, buying Quattro Wireless, a rival to AdMob, forclose to $300 million in January — signaling that Apple and Googlewould duke it out for pre-eminence in the ad market for mobile devices.


In the tech press, however, Apple’s announcement was overshadowed by much bigger news. The same day, Google introduced the Nexus One,its flagship phone designed in close collaboration with HTC, whichcarried some of the unmistakable design flourishes associated with theiPhone.


And later that month, days after Mr. Jobs derided Google’s “Don’t beevil” mantra, Google dropped any pretense of conciliation: it sent outa software update to the Nexus One, adding multitouch capabilities andthereby openly crossing a line that Mr. Jobs had drawn in the sand.


INSIDE both Apple and Google, employees say, the sense of rivalry isintense and a peacemaker is sorely needed. “I’ve never seen anythingquite like it in my life,” one Apple employee says. “I’m in so manymeetings where so many potshots are taken. It feels weird.”


At Google, which counts Microsoft, Facebook and Yahooon an ever-expanding list of rivals, the enmity toward Apple is notquite as widespread. After all, the iPhone has helped to fuel thepopularity of Google mobile services and ads.


The spat over Google Voice, along with other confrontations, sharpenedone of Google’s worst fears: that a rival could keep millions of peoplefrom accessing its services. A Google executive vowed to bring GoogleVoice to the iPhone “one way or the other,” and the company quicklydeveloped a workaround to circumvent the Apple block.


If anyone could negotiate a ceasefire, it would be Bill Campbell, awell-regarded Silicon Valley business counselor known simply as Coach.
Mr. Campbell, a former college football coach and the former chiefexecutive of Intuit, has played pivotal roles at Google. He sat in onhigh-level management meetings, counseled Mr. Schmidt individually inprivate sessions every other week, helped to establish the company’smanagement structure, and had a hand in smoothing over the initiallyturbulent relationship between Mr. Schmidt and Google’s founders.


Mr. Campbell also looms large at Apple, where he is co-chairman of theboard, and was one of the few people in whom Mr. Jobs confided duringhis health crisis.


While Mr. Campbell has tried to be a diplomat and smooth over theproblems between Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt, the task hasn’t been easy.Mr. Campbell declined to comment for this article, but people briefedon the matter say that throughout last fall, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidteach lobbied Mr. Campbell to sever his connection with the other’scompany, at times even giving him ultimatums to do so.


Finally, Mr. Campbell was forced to choose, and according to a personwith knowledge of the situation, he dropped his formal responsibilitiesat Google, although he is still informally mentoring executives there.


Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development and now a tech investor,describes such infighting as “old wine in a new bottle,” andreminiscent of many past corporate battles in Silicon Valley. He seesthe old dynamics between Apple and Microsoft being recycled, with Applestill trying to control every aspect of the user experience, andGoogle, like Microsoft before it, working with multiple partners toflood the market with a large number of devices.


While mobile phone developers favor the iPhone for now, “they are allracing ahead to develop for Android, too,” Mr. Kapor says. “Tightcontrol helps in the beginning, but it tends to choke things in thelong term.”


APPLE and Google remain partners in certain areas. Google pays Applemillions of dollars annually to make its search engine the default onApple’s Web browser, on the iPhone and soon, perhaps, on the iPad.


But there is wide speculation in technology circles that Apple ispreparing to give Google a public black eye: by making Microsoft’soffering, Bing, the preferred search engine on the iPad, and perhapseven on the iPhone. One Apple employee says that Qi Lu, the presidentof Microsoft’s online services division, was recently seen visitingApple’s campus in Cupertino to discuss such a deal. Microsoft declinedto comment.


A deal with Microsoft may not be a big blow to Google financially,because many iPhone and iPad users will undoubtedly visit Google’ssearch service from their device’s Web browser. But the backing of Mr.Jobs would amount to a very valuable and high-profile productendorsement for Microsoft, which has been the perennial underdog insearch.


And it would present an unlikely sight: Steve Jobs and Apple, runningfrom the arms of Eric Schmidt and Google, into the embrace of Steve Ballmer and Microsoft.

下个月

认领