There's a big difference between bringing good products to the market and actively working to stomp out the competition. Microsoft and Apple's anti-competitive practices are active attempts to lock out the competition. Google's actions, on the contrary, support their assertion that they want to free the world's information.
In the process, other companies will be damaged, but only because their business models have become obsolete, not because Google wants to hurt them.

Steve Jobs is notorious for building closed systems. Apple's business model is the antithesis of Google's - Apple wants to OWN the devices and the protocols and the data. As such, Google is a direct threat to Apple. Jobs fears for Apple's future. Ironically, Apple's has become the antagonist shown in their historic 1984 advertisement. Google is threatening to blow open those closed systems, liberating people's data for use anywhere, any time on any device.

I'm so glad for all that Google has done, and I haven't had to pay for anything from them yet. I'm not upset to see competition in the marketplace. I'm a consumer who thinks the strong get stronger and the weak get stronger if they work harder.

Why is Apple so popular?

Jobs has a lot of charisma. He also has a lot of followers who are of the simple mindset "Microsoft is the Devil." They ramp themselves up to fanboy levels of ecstasy when defending Apple from any criticism leveled at them.

Why? Because their leader, Steve Jobs, hates Microsoft as much as they do. Meanwhile, the Apple consumers are paying way too much for overhyped gadgets that are really nothing special.

Now the Apple turrets are turning and have Google firmly in their sights. I suppose it is fair to say that Google started it. How dare they try to compete in a market Apple wants to dominate! Forshame!

The iPad will sell well within the Apple fanbase, but will quickly be supplanted by other similar products with better features and lower prices.

It's like Steve Jobs says to his fans "Hey look at this new thing!"

And the competition says "Meh, we can do better!"

Jobs replies by screaming and kicking like a spoiled child.

How is it "evil" for 1 company to want to make a better product than another.... and letting the *CONSUMER* decide which to buy or avoid?

That makes the *COMPANY* evil?

Wow google has steve running scared. So scared he couldn't concentrate and make an innovative device with the ipad. Which would ALMOST be innovative 5 years ago!

> The bottom line is that Google wants to be
> everywhere on the Web,

If you owned a company... you wouldn't want to make money where you saw an opportunity?

(Remind me NEVER to hire you are our company.)

> and if that means
> stomping out other Web services

Google can't "stomp out" other companies. If *YOU* choose to use Google because *YOU* feel it's better, *YOU* are "stomping out" other (inferior) companies.

How do you think it should work instead? Make the best/popular companies close... and keep all the lame companies open?

Huh?

Steve

You didn't enter search business because you couldn't. Not because you are nice enough to not compete a friend.

How's that Google Kool-Aid taste? I've had my share, but you may have overindulged.

No, but startups who have been working on R&D for years who enter the market only to have Google enter it shortly after feel slighted for sure. Choice is great for consumers, but the people that get screwed when Google enters their Web service niche are those who run startups. Google has quite the advantage in being the largest search engine, essentially providing a portal to other Web services. Why go to a startup when you can go the Google and get everything? They're the Wal-Mart of Web services and startups are the independent chains. Google doesn't make you stay, but it makes sure you continue to come back by dint of collecting so much data that it's just easier to return to adopt the next Web service and so on. Google is what Yahoo might have been if the company leaders hadn't made so many poor choices.

Google is evil. Jobs is dead-on. Google is all about ad revenue, not openness. They use the guise of openness to drive other business models under, inherit their traffic and drive that traffic (with ad revenue) to Google. Anyone that thinks otherwise is a tool.

The Android phone is the perfect example. Google doesn't want to be a hardware manufacturer and they aren't trying to reinvent or perfect the phone experience. They are trying to spread Google search--and its ad revenue hooks--like a virus into the mobile sector on the wings of open source technology. (Again, openness is the mechanism, not the intent. Total search-ad revenue domination is the intent.)

Competition is not being "evil". Being evil is charging exorbitant fees/costs to consumers or requiring outrageous contracts with limited features.

Google has been out-competing everyone because they have been using a better business model than others.

Sure Jobs, Gates, and others think that Google is being evil... because Google is providing competition to keep them from being evil.

If you don't like 'em, then don't use them. That's how the free market works.

Although I think the ambition as such is good from Google, I hardly think they can live up to "don´t do evil". It´s simply something you cannot reassure being a pretty big public company.

Hey Shockeye, so the competition can do better?

Do you mean like Windows Vista? Is that better than Mac OS X? Or Windows 7??

Listen, anyone can do better if you give them 10 years to catch up!

Get real and wait for the better product- it may be a long wait. See above.

Google is the new Microsoft.

Steve Jobs is a child of a Blue Sky Tribe family.

Divide and conquer is the style of the military industrial complex.

Just look at the divisive TV add campaigns of Apple.

The Microsoft fanboys can always be counted on to pop up in an article that mentions Steve Jobs. The fact is, Google knuckled under to the Chinese government, accommodating censorship, before changing its mind. Decide for yourself if supporting a communist dictatorship is good or evil.

The "us against the world" mentality is great for generating loyalty.

So does this make Steve Jobs the new Darth Vader? Competition is good for consumers. Is it evil to release a phone if it might outsell the iPhone (not saying nexus one will do that, but someone might).

Everything comes with a price. Someone mentioned that we did not pay anything for Google for the services but Google is in this business for Money. It is not a charity company. You are not paying but someone else is paying. Also, Google to enter phone business (for an outsider) is considered war against iPhone. I also do not like that Google is collecting lots of data for its user. I am not even happy that within GMAIL they read my email and put ads related to my email CONTENT. And yes, I began use them less.

"Sure Jobs, Gates, and others think that Google is being evil... because Google is providing competition to keep them from being evil."
---

Google fan boys are cute. Google isn't doing anything than spreading their search hooks into the mobile web using open source technology because closed source would require Google's management.

Google expects fans to confuse "open source" with good intent--but they are doing it for purely cynical reasons. Google is using open source because there is no barrier to adoption by handset manufacturers, and faster adoption means more ad revenue for Google. This is the same model Microsoft used to create ubiquity in the 90s: give it away, monetize later.

It's another in a long line of Jobs "LOOK AT ME" narcissism. Competition is good, it keeps everyone on their toes and results in faster innovation.

Where Microsoft fanboys are defined as people who don't worship the ground that Steve Jobs walks on? Do Apple fanboys really think that people who use other products get as stupid as they do about their gadgets?

I'm not surprised that Jobs is lobbing broadsides at Google. He just got onstage and released a $500 piece of junk that doesn't involve any new tech whatsoever-- which offers few advantages over a netbook half its price-- and called it a breakthrough. I've yet to see a huge difference between the maxiPad and an enlarged iPod touch, and last time I checked making electronics bigger isn't the hard part.

As for Google and China, I've yet to see another company that does business over there rethink it the way Google has. And they're doing it now that they've established themselves as the go-to for advanced users, so they actually have some leverage and can possibly force things to improve, if even in a small way.

But even if that doesn't happen, do you notice that Google is the only tech company doing business over there that's caught any flak for it? Even though Yahoo actively participated in diming dissident bloggers to the Ministry of Truth? It's weird the way this shit gets reported

@Skockeye
'...the Apple consumers are paying way too much for overhyped gadgets that are really nothing special.'
I'd guess you don't own any Apple products - so how the hell would you know?

OMG the intertubes has been taken over by spoilt brat 13 year olds.
Thanks Apple, for stirring all this bile... NOT

Although I don't believe that Apple is truly everyone's friend, I feel that what Google has done since their inception has been very backhanded. They have notoriously been the content provider for many companies, while learning their business, then bringing out products to compete with them. They have engaged in many parasitic relationships with their partners, who are now suffering the consequences. From the minute I saw them partner with Apple, I knew they would be the next victim. Even though I am a big Apple fan, it does not bias me in this case because I used to be a big Google fan, and I still use their technology and probably always will. However, I am happy to see that Apple acknowledges this soon enough, unlike they did in the early days against Microsoft. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple and Microsoft started working closer together to combat Google. In this case, better the devil you know! It's like when the old, rival mob bosses rally together against a new threat. It will happen.

Google is really making a dangerous move here. They would truly be better being everyone's friend, and the content provider for everything, rather than trying to control and own everything. They are banking on the fact that Android is going to dominate, otherwise they are going to be SOL. Think about it. Right now Apple is the dominate smartphone player, and all signs say that's not going to change. With the iPad, as much as many of us (myself included) don't like or see the use for it, this will slowly become the 2nd home computer for many households. It will be the computer that families keep on the coffee table, in the kitchen, ect. The true revolution of the iPad is how it's going to transform the home PC market in the long run. The Android tablet wont be able to compete, because it doesn't have the apps. Between people's iPhone, iPods and now iPads, how often do you think the average person (outside of work) will need to use a personal computer? With Apple controlling all those devices, and more and more people using desktop PCs less and less, should Apple decide to switch search and Map providers, Google could very well lose out on what will long term be the biggest market for search. I'm not saying I think this will happen, but it's a possibility, which Google could have easily avoided. They are taking a big risk here.

Google is evil - big time. Look at their record on intellectual property. They started copying books without the authors' permission and claimed that they had the right to do it because of fair use - in spite of the fact that the courts have ruled for a long time that copying an entire work for commercial use falls well outside fair use. And when people started raising a stink about that, Google runs to Congress with millions of dollars of lobbying to try to get the copyright laws changed to allow them to copy anything they wish without compensating the authors.

If it were only Google's releasing a phone to compete with the iPhone, it wouldn't be a big deal. Notice that Jobs isn't running around calling Palm evil (in spite of their lame attempts to get around iTunes ID issues). Even the author admits:
"he is only voicing what hundreds of other companies that have had to work with Google have said privately."

I don't use Google products when there is any alternative. Don't feed the monster.

Competition is a good thing. That's why an alternative to Google search is more necessary today than ever.

What a bitter loser Jobs! Google is getting everything better than you so far and from now on. Becuase it has better vision than you do.

if you want to see evil, look at some of the documents on the boycottnovel.com site from things like the Comes vs Microsoft case. You'll see a company, Microsoft, who is constantly planning ways to block other products from the market or growing in the market. They not only assign thousands of employees and contractors to do these things, they also spend millions doing it.

When you or anyone else starts showing that Google is targeting a competitors product by paying others to no sell or not buy those products, then you've got a case. Until then, choice is how the game is played, not elimination of choice and it is about time Apple got some competition. And if Steve Jobs doesn't like it, there's a good chance even better products will be the result.

BOTH Steve Jobs and Google are Evil.

Apple is about as open as the government of North Korea, and their specialty is making everything as closed and proprietary as possible.

Big Brother Google is all about monitoring everything that everyone does on the internet, and converting that information into advertising dollars.

There is nothing evil about competition, it would be evil to let the first company into a market have market control. Additionally, competing against apple is far from stepping on the toes of the little guy. If apple releases more sub-par products like the iPhone and iPad with half the functionality of other products, then relies on brand reputation to sell them, they're going to keep running into trouble with competition.

You have a choice:

Take the Google pill and you will return to Google Land and continue to be a drone, but if you take the alternative, then you will truely see how Google has monopolized your web experience.

I don't trust google. I never click on their ads and wouldn't sign up for their 'free' products.

The pot calls the kettle black and the kettle rebuts. Personally, I won't buy any of their crap.

"We did not enter the search business, They entered the phone business"

he is talking like as if apple in the phone business for ten or fifteen years ago, they just entered this business 3 years ago and let alone the stealing from nokia to enter this business.
just how arrogant is that.

Google wouldn't be evil if they provided all the data that they collect in a consumeable and accessible way for everyone to use. After all don't they want all information to be free? Or does free only mean free for Google to exploit?

I mean Google DNS... now they can monitor your every website move without you even passing through their adworks hooks or search, quite brilliant..All of a sudden you can monitor sites that doesn't yet use their techonolgy. If sites pop up at the top with no adworks hooks it will be very good sites to persue.

Free market evaluation. Give me access to that data please.

Right on, Google's Don't be Evil pledge is BS. Google is the new Microsoft, and what they wanted to do is put their little AD on every damn thing you see on internet. They act like they are the redeemer of mankind however not without hidden agendas.

How many startups can confidently come up with a novel idea and later only to be slaughtered by Google. This is happening and continue to happen. Google wants to get into every damn thing and this is too much of a dominance. Google may have the smart folks, however they have to get rid of the "we own universe" mentality.