Yes, Google "Stole" From Apple, And That's A Good Thing

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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>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.

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.

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.<p>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.

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.<p><a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-microsoft-research-reveals-tom-cruises-technology-today" rel="nofollow">http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-micros...</a><p>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).

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.<p>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.

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.<p>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).

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.

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.<p>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.<p>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).

Alternate Title: The reason why 17 USC 102(b) exists.<p><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html</a>