When Alpha Males Collide

The NY Times writes an in-depth article on the Apple-Google feud that has developed. They say part f it is personal and part is strategic. They write:

Quote:

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

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.”

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

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