It’s no secret that Steve Jobs did not have much affinity for his mobile competition at Google, going so far as to say he would destroy Android, which he considered to be a product that was stolen from Apple. His attacks appear to have been even more personal as Fred Vogelstein’s book, Dogfight: How Apple And Google Went To War And Started a Revolution reveals. Business Insider notes one especially provocative quote in which Jobs refers to Andy Rubin, the founder of Android, as a “big, arrogant f**k,” and Android itself as a “f**king rip off of what we’re doing.”
Jobs later met with Rubin and Google executives Larry Page and Alan Eustace to force them to remove features from Android that were poised to be staples of the iPhone’s design, such as multitouch gestures and the ways users unlock their phones. Had Jobs not been so adamant, Android might have launched on a level playing field with iOS. And considering Android’s current success, there’s no telling how far ahead Google might have gotten by now.
