The rocky relationship between Apple and Google will be reveled in an upcoming book by Steven Levy called In The Plex.
In The Plex by Steven Levy will unveil the complex developments between Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, including details of Jobs’ refusal to become Google CEO and how Jobs kept the Ipad a secret from Eric Schmidt, who was on Apple’s board of directors at the time.
The book will show how the companies shared a strong partnership initially, with shared advisers and Jobs even agreeing to mentor Google’s founders after recognising the potential of the company, which was still in its infancy.
However, when Android appeared and began to threaten the success of the Iphone, things turned sour, with Jobs feeling betrayed by his former mentees. The adage of ‘the student becomes the master’ comes to mind.After Jobs revealed his fury about Android to Google’s founders, accusing them of stealing features from the iPhone, there appears to have been some initiative to keep further projects secret. This led to a situation where Schmidt was oblivious to the development of the Ipad, knowledge of which could have led to Google bringing out its own tablets significantly earlier.
Tensions between Apple and Google have been mounting as Android gains more momentum, but details of exactly how Jobs felt about the situation have so far been kept under wraps. According to the book, he called Google’s “don’t be evil” motto “bulls**t” and questioned why Google entered the phone business when Apple didn’t enter the search business
The book, currently available to pre-order, is available for $13.98 from Amazon.