From DailyTech: A new article from The Atlantic takes a look at the early days of the largest mobile software rivalry today: Android vs. iOS.
The article profiles Google's progress with Android up to the point where the iPhone was initally announced in 2007, and shortly after when the search giant realized it had to make some serious changes to the Android operating system before it was finally unveiled.
Google started working on Android in 2005, keeping the project as secret as possible. The new OS was formed in Google’s Building 44 by four dozen engineers.
After putting in 60-80 hour work weeks for about two years, Google's Android Chief Andy Rubin (as well as the rest of the Android team) got a huge surprise. On January 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone.
It wasn't a secret that Apple was releasing a phone. Google knew that, but it really didn't expect the iPhone to be as good as it was at the time. In fact, Google was more threatened by Microsoft's entrance into the mobile realm, since Microsoft was the computer software leader for so long.
Google also worried that Microsoft would release a phone exclusively with its own search engine instead of Google search, which could really hurt Google's business. At the time, a lot of Google's income depended on search ads, which appeared next to its search results.
It's hard to believe that Microsoft would be such a feared mobile contender today, since it currently has about 3.6 percent global market share and Android just passed the 80 percent mark. But back before the iPhone and Android and Windows Phone came along, Google thought Microsoft could kill off its search engine the way it did Netscape with Internet Explorer in the 1990s. It figured that people would rush to whatever mobile browser Microsoft offered and possibly leave Google in the dust.
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