From Patrick McGee's "Apple beefs up smartphone services in ‘silent war’ against Google" ($) posted Wednesday by the Financial Times:
Apple is taking steps to separate its mobile operating system from features offered by Google parent Alphabet, making advances around maps, search and advertising that has created a collision course between the Big Tech companies.
The two Silicon Valley giants have been rivals in the smartphone market since Google acquired and popularized the Android operating system in the 2000s.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called Android “a stolen product” that mimicked Apple’s iOS mobile software, then declared “thermonuclear war” on Google, ousting the search company’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt from the Apple board of directors in 2009.
While the rivalry has been less noisy since, two former Apple engineers said the iPhone maker has held a “grudge” against Google ever since. One of these people said Apple is still engaged in a “silent war” against its arch-rival. It is doing so by developing features that could allow the iPhone-maker to further separate its products from services offered by Google.
My take: Not much new here.
Anything which lights a fire in the form of good rhetoric is good for the narrative though, so soldiers march on!