Anyways, I figured I would jump on the “Hey I have my own blog I don’t need to use other peoples’ blogs’ commenting sections anymore” bandwagon. So here are some of my thoughts on the whole Apple vs Google (or is that Google vs Apple?) debatereligious war.

Apple is a hardware company. They sell hardware. Always have, and likely always will. They are successful and make a ton of money. I don’t think anybody will have a differing opinion. Likewise, Google is a search engine company. Always provided great search functionality and likely always will. They are successful and make a ton of money from their revolutionary online advertising venture. Then their huge success somehow turned them into an advertising company in the minds of a bunch of people. I, however, still liken them to Ferrari in that Ferrari is a racing company that sells cars to fund their racing. Google sells ads to fund their search enginetechnology related desires. Not everybody remains focused on their initial product. Similarly, Nintendo used to sell playing cards (which is hilarious because I own 2 decks) and now they sell electronic gamingaddiction.

Back to the story at hand:

Then a line was drawn in the sand and people somehow found themselves on either Google’s side or Apple’s side. Apple’s side claiming google invaded Apple territory first, and well, Google’s side saying “no we didn’t?”.

Really though, Apple is just large enough that they need to expand into a market (mobile advertising). Google is already in that market and so they defend their presence and try to ensure their positiondominance. Google is large enough that they need to expand into a market (mobile devices) to ensure their business maintains its access to everybody’s eyeballs and data. Apple is already in that market so they defend their presence and try to ensure their positiondominance. It’s like an unstoppable force headed straight into an immovable wall.

The ammo people used to fuel both sides of the ‘argument’ are kind of ridiculous.

“Google attacked first cause they released a phone after apple did.” – Google released a phone to get their Android partners who were floundering in the mobile hardware idea department to get their act together and actually start to release decent products. If they didn’t, then Android would die and Google would get shut out.
“Apple invaded Google’s territory first by trying to get into the advertising business with adMob.” – Apple tried to buy adMob because they have to try their best to suck as much money out of the iPhone platform as they can.
“Google attacked first cause they bought adMob out from under Apple.” – Google wants adMob for the same reason they wanted Doubleclick, to expand their clientbase. They also didn’t want Apple to shut them out of the iPhone and this seemed like a good move in that direction.
“Apple shut Google/adMob out of the iPhone only as retaliation due to Google stealing adMob out from under Apple” – Apple would have shut Google out of the iPhone as soon as they could possibly do it, regardless of whether Google bought adMob or not. Apple just needed to buy an adMob-type company to get the first step before they shut Google out.

Gruber implies that Google isn’t a trustworthy partner to do business with and references how Google released the Nexus One which competed with their partners (Motorola Droid). He fails to see how Apple treats their iPhone developer partners that create software products that may compete with Apples’ future offerings (widgets anyone?).

Apple sees itself in the same boat as before when they were competing against Windows. Google has their product and the backing of a large number of industry heavy hitters. Apple is lone-gunning it as it always has been and needs to find a way to prevent the past from happening again. Acting the same way you have always been seems to be a surefire way of reliving the past, except this time Apple has the huge iPhone client base to abuse their partners with.

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I initially thought this post would be short to get some thoughts out, but I guess it grew in size pretty quickly. Usually when I try to write a post and it ends up long like this I decide not to post it because I end up feeling like it’s just a big long rant that has no purpose or point to get across. Since I’m trying something new I’ve decided that I’ll post it anyways.