

Yes, Google "Stole" From Apple, And That's A Good Thing - darklighter3
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2011/10/25/yes-google-stole-from-apple-and-thats-a-good-thing/

======
msg
If you sit experts in separate rooms and give them the same problems, often
they will converge to the same solution. Whether that is due to physical
limitations, mathematical or statistical considerations, the current state of
the market, what have you.

There are a lot of narrow physical constraints operating in this market: the
size of the human hand, the size of a fingertip, the range of human vision,
the distance from the eye to the screen in terms of arm's length. There are
other technology givens like the resolution of a screen that fits in the hand
and the precision of touch technology. There are cultural givens to pull
something apart to stretch it or push it together to make it smaller, or to
advance a view by turning a page.

The more you think about these problems, the more you realize how narrow the
space for innovation was in them, and in fact how many of Apple's innovations
were anticipated by the market. Apple got there first with the whole package
and reaped the benefits in mindshare. But they shouldn't be able to seek rent
on a solution that experts would create in a vacuum.

~~~
Anechoic
> _If you sit experts in separate rooms and give them the same problems, often
> they will converge to the same solution._

As a universal truth, I don't buy this. This is partially based on my own
engineering experience, but in terms of the smartphone market I see WP7 (and
to a lesser extent Palm) and see touch phone experiences that are
significantly different than what Apple developed/evolved with iOS (although
it is true that some of the implementation details like pinch-to-zoom are
present there as well, but other details are different).

There is no universal axiom that says that a smartphone experience has to look
like an iPhone. I think everyone would be better off if Google took more of an
independent route rather than just building an experience using bits and
pieces of iOS and WP7.

~~~
msg
I'm an engineer as well. I would say that in interfaces especially, we
converge toward best practices globally. Your customer is not happy to have to
learn a hundred interfaces or switch interfaces when they get a new device or
program. For instance, the VCR. Or Windows version bumps. Or the Ribbon. They
prefer one interface to rule them all, like Logitech Harmony remotes, the
browser, the command line, Emacs.

The current market provides some evidence.

[http://searchengineland.com/comscore-android-nears-50-us-
sma...](http://searchengineland.com/comscore-android-nears-50-us-smartphone-
market-share-95768)

70% of the smartphone market is in iOS and Android, two very similar
smartphone experiences. RIM's distinctive experience is at 20% and falling
fast (it was at 27% in March). WP7 is an also ran at 5%. Symbian is at 2%.
Palm is not in the chart.

If you believe those numbers, the contest is all but over. Every non-iOS non-
Android experience is failing in the market. It may not be just because of
their designs, but I think you have to believe on other grounds that UX/design
is the major selling point for all smartphones. The second contender might be
applications, and iOS and Android are the leaders there too, by a wide margin
over the field.

I think Google decided to beat Apple at its own game. Whatever you believe
about how they used Apple's patented material (or not) or how valid the
patents are (or not), clearly at some point a decision was made to compete
with Apple not just on features, but also in UI polish and look and feel.

And somebody probably looked at Apple and said, how can we top that? When they
couldn't, they kept it as similar as possible for a variety of reasons: the
patents were too broad to be enforceable, they could justify deriving the same
concepts in a vacuum because they come from well known UX principles that
predate the patents, the design elements were universals that all phones
should have, they should lower switching costs from iOS to Android.

I agree with you that Google could have gone its own way when designing a
phone experience. But I don't know that that would have been a path to
success. You would only have to believe the preceding paragraph to imagine
that a think-different UX could have been worse for consumers.

------
dimitar
Deja vu - Apple has pretensions that everyone (and especially its biggest
rivals) are stealing from them, while simultaneously copying successful
features from countless other products.

The non-recognition of this fact of course is the biggest threat for Apple and
non-recognition of pretensions of owning 'innovation' a threat. Because
selling pretentiousness is the business model.

~~~
TomOfTTB
This was different. Look at the original Android Prototype:
[http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/android-prototype-lets-
hope...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/android-prototype-lets-hope-looks-
can-be-deceiving/)

Google scrapped that and then turned around and copied the iPhone. And they
copied everything about the iPhone. The resolution was the same. There were
the same number of icons per row. Applications placed icons in the same place.
You pinched to zoom on both devices. You switched between screens by swiping
on both systems. Both systems had an app store (a previously unheard of way to
deliver applications).

This isn't Mac vs. Windows or Xerox vs. Mac. This was way above that in the
theft department.

~~~
comm_it
I cannot tell if you're being facetious or not. App stores were not unheard of
in the slightest.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Can you name an Apple like app store before the iPhone? The closest you can
come is Nokia and Symbian and that was a download an executable type thing.

An app store as we understand it today where you click a buy button and the
app installs on your computer was an Apple innovation

~~~
bryanlarsen
Linspire's click 'n run from 2002:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_(software)>

edit: which of course, is just apt-get/synaptic + the ability to pay money.
All of the real innovation came from Debian.

------
freejack
I haven't read the Steve bio yet, however my guess is that his issue lies with
the fact that Schmidt was a board member and how that relationship panned out,
rather than the specific technology that showed up in Android. If technology
of mine showed up in one of my board member's companies, I'd be pretty upset
about it as well - but primarily on the basis that the board member "stole"
from me instead of upholding his fiduciary obligation to my organization. Its
a tricky one, but I think that Steve might have been right in this case.

~~~
bitsweet
Schmidt is on record (<http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11934>) that
he would step out of board meetings when there were conflicts of interest.

~~~
technoslut
If rumors are true then Eric Schmidt had an iPhone prototype in 2007.

[http://gizmodo.com/5479684/google-ceos-mistress-tell+all-
blo...](http://gizmodo.com/5479684/google-ceos-mistress-tell+all-blog-
prototype-iphones-and-steve-stoned-jesuit-jobs)

I don't think that Schmidt stepped out of board meetings until early demos of
the G1 were shown off bearing a resemblance to the iPhone.

------
saturdaysaint
I respect what Apple's done with the iPhone a lot more than I respect Google's
contributions, but I don't see what Apple gains (beyond a little bit of
marginal profit from slowing down Android adoption with lawsuits) from this
holy war. In my mind, they've profited in exact proportion to how much they
innovated in the phone market - Android just means that they'll have to keep
innovating if they want to keep profiting.

Ultimately, I think Job's emotional reaction is one common to forward thinking
people. Andrew Masson has been similarly disgusted with Groupon clones. PG
hasn't exactly been sanguine about the YCominator knockoffs. The copycat
competitors contribute in many ways, but I think that great minds can only
respect people who bring truly new ideas to the table, not those that find a
niche or an edge in the marketplace after riding in their wake.

~~~
alttag
Part of having a differentiated product is avoiding market confusion. While
there is certainly some back-and-forth between Google and Apple, are there
those here that don't think Samsung may have gone too far in mimicking so much
about the iPhone/iPad experience? (From using Apple's icons in their sales
displays to photoshopping iPhone screenshots for their phone, along with
similar packaging and unboxing, ... the list goes on.)

Yes, some sharing is good for consumers, but at some point the knockoffs need
to be called on it. The whole discussion boils down to where that line is.

~~~
eridius
There was an article recently about how, in a courtroom, a judge held up an
iPad and a Samsung tablet and asked the Samsung lawyers to identify which was
their tablet, and they couldn't. I think that's a clear indication that
Samsung hurtled over the line.

(I'd provide a link but I'm on a flaky connection right now. It was on reddit,
and probably on HN as well).

------
steve8918
Again, not to belabor a point but in a previous HN post, I noted that
Microsoft Surface was likely an earlier prototype with multi-touch, as well as
demos of a working "Pinch-to-zoom" back in 2006. I have no clue if and when
iPhone already had this feature in a prototype, but Microsoft was definitely
demoing this pre-iPhone.

[http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-
micros...](http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-microsoft-
research-reveals-tom-cruises-technology-today)

So the funny thing about the article is that it states as fact that Google
copied Apple's pinch-to-zoom (but that it was a good thing), when in fact the
case could be made that Apple copied Microsoft's pinch-to-zoom (I'm not sure
if they did or not).

~~~
alok-g
See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch>

Excerpts:

A breakthrough occurred in 1991, when Pierre Wellner published a paper on his
multi-touch “Digital Desk”, which supported multi-finger and pinching motions.

... however both the function and the term predate the announcement or patent
requests, except for such area of application as capacitive mobile screens,
which did not exist before Fingerworks/Apple's technology

~~~
tensor
It's even worse, the pinch gesture goes back to 1983. [1]

[1] <http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html>

------
protomyth
I really wished Google or (more appropriately) Blackberry would have gone the
opposite direction from Apple. Good keyboard support something more in the
Raskin's Cat vein. It's nice to see Microsoft go with their Metro interface or
the card metaphor of WebOS. Heck, just starting with a browser ala Chrome
would have been better. The talk shouldn't be about patent violations, it
should be about lack of vision.

I too believe much of this has to do with Schmidt on the board and the radical
change of Android from pre to post iPhone. It just seems we really lost
something when they made their switch.

~~~
masklinn
> It just seems we really lost something when they made their switch.

I don't know about that. If they changed their "vision" from "replicate
blackberry" to "replicate iPhone", we (where "we" = "society"/"everybody")
didn't stand to gain anything in the first place, apart from cheaper phones
maybe (and even that...)

~~~
protomyth
I was hoping more for a more refined follow on to the Danger, not a Blackberry
clone. Guess you're right though, any replicant would have not expanded
anything.

There was really a shot at trying a lot of new ways to interact with mobile
devices and very little made it to market in the quest to follow the other
guy.

~~~
masklinn
> There was really a shot at trying a lot of new ways to interact with mobile
> devices and very little made it to market in the quest to follow the other
> guy.

I'm glad Microsoft at least is going that way. Palm tried it as well (and as
far as I'm concerned WebOS still has the nicest notification system) although
they failed for other reasons.

------
tmh88j
The whole "imitate me and I'll sue" mentality is eventually going to stop
innovation when we get to a point that you can't even use the same features
regardless if they are accomplished in opposite ways.

This reminds me of Ford's stance when Robert Kearns took them to court for his
design of the intermittant windshield wiper (the story was made into a movie a
while back).

------
folkster
It's a sad fact that Google became more of a follower than innovator recently.
I can't remember of a successful innovative product by Google in the past few
years, but we all know Google deals after Groupon, Google plus after Facebook
and Android after IOS.

~~~
cbs
>It's a sad fact that Google became more of a follower than innovator
recently.

Haven't they always been a do _x_ good company? Web search and email were
around for years before google showed up.

~~~
eridius
Google disrupted the search market. Sure, the basic idea of searching the web
wasn't new, but Google did it so much better than anyone else. Since then,
they haven't done anything at all disruptive. They've just been copying other
people's products and hoping their huge size will let them win.

~~~
kgen
Gmail was pretty disruptive, not to mention Chrome which reignited the browser
wars in a way that Firefox never really did...

------
TomOfTTB
I think there's an easy answer to this problem but it gets obscured by an
"either/or" mentality. Either you support patents or you think it's ok for
Google to outright steal the iPhone interface.

Allow companies to patent innovations but legally force them to license it to
others for a "fair price". That way companies can still build on top of each
other's innovations but inventors still get financial compensation for their
invention.

I recognize there would be a problem in pricing the license but since these
cases end up in court anyway (where a judge or jury determines the fair value)
I don't see how allowing companies to resolve what "fair price" means would be
any different than what we have now. Except it would take out the ambiguity
for the consumer(since a company like Google would never have to pull the
product from the market).

~~~
jamesbritt
_Either you support patents or you think it's ok for Google to outright steal
the iPhone interface._

What if you think they copied the Palm Pilot GUI?

Music publishing has compulsory licensing, so there's some precedent about how
it might work, but music copyrights are nearly as fucked as software patents.
In neither case is the root problem addressed.

We need more pirate, less navy.

~~~
runjake
_> What if you think they copied the Palm Pilot GUI?_

Apple _did_ copy it from the Treo-era PalmOS. A grid of fingertip-sized
tappable app icons.

And I'm OK with that, because it fosters progress, competition, and iterative
improvements of existing technologies. I don't see the big issue with copying
user interfaces. You'll either take the idea and improve on it, or make a
mockery of it and your product will fail.

------
Shenglong
Alternate Title: The reason why 17 USC 102(b) exists.

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html>

