Jobs: Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is "bullsh*t"

updated 11:55 pm EST, Sat January 30, 2010

Jobs takes on Adobe and Google at meeting

An inside report from within an Apple town hall meeting has revealed some of CEO Steve Jobs' blunt criticisms, particularly against Google. In the wake of the iPad launch, Jobs claimed the search firm's motto of "Don't Be Evil" is simply "bullsh*t" and that the new rival is fully intent on killing the iPhone with Android despite the companies' partnership on iPhone services. He similarly pointed out that the aggression was largely one-sided and that Apple hadn't entered search.

Notably, the attendee also mentioned to Wired that Jobs called Adobe "lazy" and confirmed the commonly held belief that Apple refuses to offer Flash for the iPhone due to stability. Since Flash is the single most common source of crashes for Safari and even the Mac as a whole, it would likely fare poorly on handhelds as well, he said. Jobs, like some critics, believes many sites will move away from Flash and towards HTML5, which supports direct video streaming without a plugin.

While not part of any public statement, Jobs' comments signal a more determined stance not to be outdone by Android as well as a rejection of Adobe's criticism of the iPad for again abandoning Flash. The software house has argued that Apple isn't providing the whole web, although Apple has countered both by offering an enhanced YouTube app as well as loosening App Store limits to let many third-party developers offer apps that would normally need Flash, such as Qik or Ustream.

By Electronista Staff

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TAGS :

iPhone, industry, Google, Android, Adobe, Flash, Safari, Ustream, mobile phones, Qik, Apple, iPad

Jonathan-Tanya

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2004

-8

01/31, 12:37am | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

out of context

I'm sure these quotes would be more interesting in context.

Googles 'don't be evil' pledge was never intended to signal that they don't believe in competition and free enterprise.

Of course Google has a competing phone, and they will do their best in the cell phone market.

Apple is free to enter the search market, and do their best. Apple's move into the browser sphere, even on Windows, is a pre-cursor to entering the search market. Whether ultimately they go that route, or don't, remains to be seen.

It's not evil to have competition. Nobody 'owns' search and nobody 'owns' smartphones.

SockRolid

Forum Regular

Joined: Jan 2010

01/31, 02:18am | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

It's about ads, not Android

I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs thinks that Google is now "doing evil" by slowly "poisoning" their search results by putting paid clients' results at the top. For example, I just googled "orchids" (since I'm watching my DVD of "Adaptation" now.) There's a "Sponsored Links" box above all normal search results, with links to two local florists and Orchids.com.

If that isn't a sellout, then what is? Is selling out doing evil? I guess that depends on your definitions of selling out and evil. But clearly Google is awarding the highest bidder with highest placement.

As we all know by now, Google outbid Apple for online ad firm AdMob. Apple's consolation prize was their purchase of Quattro Wireless, a wireless ad firm. So it's clear that they'll be slugging it out in the mobile ad space real soon now.

Google will be taking money from advertisers, like they have been for years, but now they're being more obvious about it. Apple will be enticing iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users to buy content through iTunes. Should be interesting.

elroth

Joined: Jul 2006

+12

01/31, 02:23am | report spam | close reply

Google's pledge is BS

LGoogle made that pledge when they first started - that's a long time ago, and it's not what they live by now (if they ever did).

I agree that it would be nice to get the context of Jobs' remarks.

I don't think he would say that Google is evil just because it's competing with the iPhone. It may be something Google's doing in their software - maybe making apps that run better on Android than they do on the iPhone? Or using their knowledge of the iPhone's proprietary technical details, and copying them? Or maybe something they're doing with their Mobile Ad system. Just speculating on my part.

My own view of the evils of Google run more to the privacy side - Google wants to get its fingers (and its nose) into everything everyone does on the computer, and use that information to try to sell things. It couldn't use Double Click in the way it wanted (it got stopped by privacy concerns), but it has plenty of other methods - like using it's database (and software embedded in Google Earth and other programs that 'phone home' all the time) to compile information on individuals that it can use later. It may not be that bad right now, but Google wants to get there.

facebook_Kevin

Via Facebook

+18

01/31, 04:27am | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

Sitting on Apple's Board?

Well, it WAS kind of evil to create Android with someone sitting on Apple's board of directors. After the way Bill Gates did Steve Jobs over the Mac, he couldn't be too happy about the same thing happening over the iPhone. I know I'd be pissed.

TiberiusMonkey

Joined: Jul 2008

01/31, 06:10am | report spam | close reply

It is understandable why he'd feel like this.

I'm sure some would label me a fanboy for saying that, but what facebook_Kevin says is true, if you look at very early Android prototype examples they look like phones UIs pre the iPhone then we see the iPhone and *pop* all of a sudden Android starts looking very similar.

I'm also starting to wonder just what Google is doing with all this information, something a lot of the new Android defenders seem totally fine with.

bonaccij

Joined: Jun 2003

01/31, 08:34am | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

They have always been

I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who think that Google, with it's Android and "open" policy are the shining beacon of what it means to be an open source company. And for many, I am sure that "seems" like a good thing. I have always said, from day one, thought that Google was on it's way to becoming the next Microsoft. Like anything else, it's a business. At the end of the day, Google is trying to make a buck just like everyone else.That said, all big business is evil. ALL. So, there really should be no surprise here. Google was (unfortunately) aware of the plans for the iPhone and, yes, borrowed some ideas. Just business I guess. I do think, however, that Jobs has it right when he says that the public admonition of "evilness", if you will is poppycock.

Now, as for Adobe and Flash - you know what I think Apple should do? I think they should bite the bullet, allow flash on all of their devices BUT put in a switch so that users can turn it on and off at their will. I think, then, people would see how crappy it is. When their phones and iPads run out of juice after 20 minutes... etc. etc. THEN, Apple could put out a page explaining WHY, when you turn on Flash, that happens. I truly think that would be the end of this discussion and then Adobe would be forced to go ahead and fix what they have broken. At least then it would all be out in the open and there wouldn't be any more hearsay.

Agreed? :-)

Sabon

Joined: Mar 2005

01/31, 09:48am | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

Who is lying? Apple or Adobe? But then I don't car

Flash - Who is lying? Is it Apple or Adobe. If Adobe truly does not have the hooks into Mac OS X to make it a very good app on Mac OS X (including iPhone) then Apple is lying. If Adobe does have the hooks it needs, then Adobe is lying. I don't know which is true.

What I do know, is that I have a flash blocker on my Macs and I will ALWAYS have one as long as their are animated ads or ads that get in my way of reading what I am trying to read.

Comment buried. Show

facebook_Mark

-20

01/31, 09:52am | report spam | (3 replies) close | reply

Jobs is a barefaced liar

Boy, Jobs is the biggest control freak in the industry.

To get music on to an ipod or iphone, you HAVE to have Quicktime (apple) you HAVE to have iTunes (apple) you HAVE to have a proprietory cable (apple) and the iTunes store is all over your face no matter what you do. I call that aggression in the extreme.

Last week he called the iPad (the apple one, not the Fujitsu one from 2003) "the most advanced technology" he has worked on. What an obscene joke. This kind of marketing lie is what Jobs has been doing, and convincing the apple (we are better than you) zealots for years and years. It has been rubbish about the superior speed of macs, the greater versatility, the greater reliability etc etc, non stop marketing rubbish.

Apple will aggressively compare themselves to some (pretentious) yuppie called I am a Mac, and make the PC an obese geek. Hmmm. I know Jobs is physically unwell, but my goodness, what a hypocritical d*** he is.

I have an 8 core macpro and a 17 inch macbook pro. One of them boots to OSX, the other to Win7. Who cares? But I really dislike the dishonesty that apple has ongoingly displayed in their advertising and, dare I say, "evil" control freakery.

Cheers,
Mark.

jdsonice@gmail.com

Joined: Oct 2009

01/31, 10:22am | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

Flash Sucks

I think Google should have resigned their seat on Apple board BEFORE developing the android phone. In that they did do evil. At the same time I think having competition is good and having it from a solid company is better it will drive both products to get better over time.

Flash is bad. That is all I can say. My Mac and PC crash all the time.

jpellino

Joined: Oct 1999

-3

01/31, 10:49am | report spam | close reply

Right on Adobe, Wrong on Google

Adobe has been staunchly lazy when it comes to the Mac platform. Unless someone has a better word for it. They failed - either out of ignorance or spite - to heed the call to move to XCode and got caught flat-footed on Intel apps. And stayed that way for what amounts to a lifetime in development years. I hope to God that was not what they imagined to be some sort of inspired business plan. They treaded water on certain apps until they just dumped PPC code and went straight to Intel. Flash is the single buggiest thing in the entire OS experience, and it should not be in the iPhone unless it is rock solid. So HTML 5 will eventually surpass them anyway, but it is a flagship technology, but they don't own YouTube... decisions decisions... they likely don't know whether to spit or wind their watch.

Google isn't evil. They are a business. One of their BUs competes with one of Apple's BUs. Steve doesn't respond well to competition at first, and this is new competition. He'll figure it out. Steve likes to use words like tranquilizer darts. You stun your prey, then they are far more compliant while an actual plan is developed. Despite every bit of invective between him and Bill, they worked out their differences and it's now just healthy competition. And if Apple were to roll Google search into the iPhone ecosystem at the basic level, they would drop Android like a hot potato. Frankly with Google on their board, I'm surprised that didn't happen first. Branding would be an issue for both parties, and there are probably public company board politics that are beyond my ken.

iphonerulez

Joined: Nov 2008

-4

01/31, 10:55am | report spam | close reply

Money is the root of all evil...

But it's those thick roots that make businesses successful and more evil. Both Apple and Google are about the same size and they'll do whatever it takes to outgrow one another. Even if they have to overlap in one another's back yard. I'm an Apple investor and I want Apple to do whatever it takes to get its share price higher. If they go into search or start grabbing ad revenue from Google, I don't care. If Google floods the market with cheap Android phones then they're doing whatever they can to get more revenue at the iPhone's expense.

These are big businesses and doing evil is OK if they can make more money. Both companies. Microsoft didn't get to where it is by being a fair or just company. They stole from or bought out any company that got in their way with a focus on capturing the whole desktop market and they succeeded. Now Google and Apple want to grow just as big as Microsoft and will do whatever takes to reach that goal. Maybe there is a lesser of the two evils, but I'm not sure which company that is. I want Apple to be evil if it can grow to exceed Microsoft. Apple, show me the money.

I want Flash to go away. I don't see Flash banners anymore thanks to ClickToFlash, but working Flash sucks up resources like a sponge on OSX and if Adobe doesn't support both Windows and OSX equally then Flash should go away. Neither Adobe or Apple is giving in and it looks like Flash will continue to be a large part of the internet. Only Mac users will suffer, but it's just unfortunate. No Apple consumer will want to see the Blue Lego Block of Ambiguity on their iPad, but there's little can be done about it.

anthology123

Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Nov 2000

01/31, 12:15pm | report spam | close reply

Steve knows exactly what Google is doing

The Android phone is just the beginning. Eventually, the Android will be a free phone, then the data service will be free, then the voice service will be free. All of it driven and paid for by ad placement. When Google has figured out how to do that, they will pass out phones by the millions, how can iPhone (or anyone else) compete with free? Google does not own a phone spectrum, but they made it possible to gain access into one. The next step is laptop computers with the Google OS.
It's about time that Apple saw this, and if MS is also smart, they should be seeing that Google is the one to compete with, not Apple. That might explain why Apple is making the move to Bing. How many people here have a free Gmail account? Google is changing the rules of the game and Apple has to stay ahead, change, or become a niche company.

Catamaran

01/31, 02:08pm | report spam | close reply

Google should scare you

Google is currently the single greatest threat to the internet. They want to handle all your searches and host all your data in their cloud, but what's their attitude towards privacy?

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"

-Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, December 2009

http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people

They're moving towards controlling OS + browser + your data + internet data. They're giving a whole new meaning to vertical monopoly. Anyone who thought Apple had one hasn't seen anything yet.

If Google doesn't scare you, you aren't paying attention.

chas_m

Moderator

Joined: Aug 2001

01/31, 07:20pm | report spam | close reply

Sorry, but Steve is actually right on both counts.

Yeah, I'm a fanboy. Love Apple, love what Steve has done with it. But I also use one or more Google services at LEAST 20 times a day, and the world would absolutely be a poorer place indeed without them -- so maybe that makes me a Google fanboy too.

I also use Adobe products on a daily basis, and have supported them monetarily for at least 20 years now, and highly recommend most of their stuff -- so I'm also an Adobe fanboy.

But to address the two SPECIFIC comments reported on here:

a. "Don't be evil" is bullshit -- Steve's absolutely a-1 100% right about this. Google has, on many specific and documentable instances, gone well beyond "just being a business" and actually done specifically evil things. The last straw, for me, was the collaboration with the Chinese government to find and suppress dissidents. People are DEAD today because of that "business decision." But hey, who cares about the Chinese, right? Ah, but what happened to your privacy on the web? For the most part, you can thank Google for killing off the last vestiges of privacy on the web too.

b. "Adobe are lazy" (and what amounts to "Flash sucks") -- both again absolutely spot-on, no matter how nifty a thing you can make with Flash. I am not a Flash HATER, I enjoy seeing creative and clever flash sites just fine -- but that whizziness comes at a terrible trio of costs: stability, processor power (waaay out of proportion to what it should need) and battery power. They could have and should have revamped Flash and fixed these issues 10 years ago, but didn't -- now they (and they alone) are the single BIGGEST factor making computers obsolete before their time. Your old G4 (h***, your G3!) can still surf the web perfectly fine -- until it hits a flash-heavy/video-flash type site.

After getting hit with a bunch of NOISY/CAN'T TURN THEM OFF flash ads, I decided to install ClickToFlash on my computer, which acts as a "gatekeeper" -- letting me selectively turn ON what little flash content I might want to see (and "whitelist" sites that always need it), but keeping all other Flash turned off. In short, WOW did that change the speed and quality of the surfing experience! I *highly* recommend all Mac users get this free tool as soon as possible -- you will notice a huge difference IMMEDIATELY.

Steve knows perfectly well that "Flash Lite" or "a little bit of Flash support" will never work with the iPad or the iPhone -- it's full support, or nothing. A solution like ClicktoFlash that is built right into the system of these devices might provide the solution -- users can VOLUNTARILY choose to murder their battery life and make their device more unstable if they want, with the appropriate warnings -- but until that can be done system-wide, or Adobe FINALLY gets off their a** and FIXES THE ACTUAL PROBLEM, Steve is absolutely right to bar Flash from the mobile device experience.

This "business decision" in particular has BENEFICIAL effects for more-efficient alternatives, like (for video) HTML5. I particularly find it hilariously ironic that the EXACT SAME people who criticise the iPad/iPhone as "closed platforms" also complain that they don't support Adobe's much-more-proprietary, hostile-to-open-source "closed platform." Consistency much, folks?

In short, if I wasn't already a fan of the man and his outlook, this speech -- which confirms my own opinion borne of real-world experience -- would have made me an admirer. As my mother used to say: Tell it like it T-I-S, Mr. Jobs.

resuna

Joined: Jan 2005

-5

01/31, 09:07pm | report spam | (1 reply) close | reply

Mister Jobs, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL

If you want to compete with Android, then tear down the paywall barrier for application developers, let people use THEIR OWN PHONES that THEY OWN without having to break into them. Make the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch into Open Systems, instead of waiting for Google to roll over you with a slightly more open platform.

ggirton

Joined: Nov 1999

01/31, 10:39pm | report spam | close reply

I love flash

but it's true. It does crash Safari quite a bit.
I definitely don't want that on my phone. But I'm
not that crazy about ads either. & I notice that the
Kindle developer terms of use call for No Advertising.
There are a lot of things to like about Kindle

lamewing

Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: Aug 2004

-2

02/01, 01:36am | report spam | close reply

Look in the mirror Steve

This comment coming from the company that is advertising the iPad (which I am interested in) while CLEARLY displaying a webpage that had flash running on it...something the iPad simply cannot do. Does false advertisement = evil ???

testudo

02/01, 01:54pm | report spam | close reply

They're all the same

All companies/corporations of this size are no different. Their goal is to make money, first and foremost. After that comes making money. Followed by making money. Followed by caring about your customers (assuming it doesn't cost too much money).

Google supposedly helped track down some dissidents in China? Isn't just being in China basically legitamizing China's hard-line government rule? How much of the money spent on a Mac ends up back in the pockets of the state? How much do any of these companies look the other way on so they can keep their cheap labor and sell you your $1.99 tube socks? How sure are you that no part of your Mac was manufactured or assembled by prison labor? Or slave labor? Or in sweatshops?

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Jobs: Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is "bullsh*t"

updated 11:55 pm EST, Sat January 30, 2010

Jobs takes on Adobe and Google at meeting

out of context

It's about ads, not Android

Google's pledge is BS

Sitting on Apple's Board?

It is understandable why he'd feel like this.

They have always been

Who is lying? Apple or Adobe? But then I don't car

Jobs is a barefaced liar

Flash Sucks

Right on Adobe, Wrong on Google

Money is the root of all evil...

Steve knows exactly what Google is doing

Google should scare you

Sorry, but Steve is actually right on both counts.

Mister Jobs, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL

I love flash

Look in the mirror Steve

They're all the same

Login Here

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Electronista Marketplace

Jobs: Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is "bullsh*t"

updated 11:55 pm EST, Sat January 30, 2010

Jobs takes on Adobe and Google at meeting

Related Articles

Recent Articles

out of context

It's about ads, not Android

Google's pledge is BS

Sitting on Apple's Board?

It is understandable why he'd feel like this.

They have always been

Who is lying? Apple or Adobe? But then I don't car

Jobs is a barefaced liar

Flash Sucks

Right on Adobe, Wrong on Google

Money is the root of all evil...

Steve knows exactly what Google is doing

Google should scare you

Sorry, but Steve is actually right on both counts.

Mister Jobs, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL

I love flash

Look in the mirror Steve

They're all the same

Login Here

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Electronista Marketplace