It used to be a long-lasting relations based on the "so-seemed" friendship between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The latter was in Apple's board of directors by the way. The mutual feelings were very special, including vanilla-frosted cupcakes and tea together.

Many would agree that the iPhone's 2007 launch would be less shiny without Google's assistance which had contributed a lot into the first fabulous Apple's device. Google Maps turned to be a part of the new iPhone and since then have been used in many iPhone apps delivered by third party iPhone developers. Google search became the default search of the gadget. And all those functions looked just gorgeous. iPhone users could enjoy their favorite YouTube resource, as Google made YouTube perform nicely when used in QuickTime and moved all videos from cursed Flash to the h.264 standard which is the predominant web standard used by Steve Jobs' company. Google even optimized its apps for Apple. Their entire Google portal became Apple phone friendly, following up on the optimization of GCal and GDocs for the Apple gadget. And Apple seemed to like it.

Almost everyone perceived their relations as absolutely complementary, stating the companies have very little to argue about as their core competencies hardly overlap. The solid friendship could have contributed to the further development of the both companies while Apple can learn something from Google's web experience and Schmidt's company could benefit greatly from having an inside relationship with a hardware & system software company. As the time will show the both company have learnt a lot from their short-term friendship, and have splendidly put the theoretical knowledge into practice. In addition the common enemy made them even closer. The role of the Evil Empire was as always performed by Microsoft. Apple's antagonism was clear due to the recently lost desktop war while Google, focusing efforts on building a cloud computing environment was striving to push the company in non-existence together with its desktop OS and shift a user's every day experience to the Web which was clearly Google's domain. Good old days! Alas!

The iPhone was extremely fabulous and gorgeous and amazing. Even neglecting all those superlatives that very emotional and sensitive Apple's top managers like to use we must admit that the novice reinvented a smartphone as a communication gadget. So, no wonder, quite soon it became a huge success, presenting the future of ubiquitous consumer-oriented computing.

But envy is REALLY bad. It corrupts everything, saying nothing about the tender and fragile feelings of the high-tech giants which by default are meant to fail. And a control issue appeared as the good old friend turned to manage one of consumers' windows to the Web and the window was beginning to grow larger and larger. But the Web was Google's domain after all. And it was then when everybody understood that Google is a quick learner and got a lot from its friendship. The new Android OS might have been a slight imitation of the iPhone OS but it was viable and, what's more important, it was free. Nothing lures that much than a possibility to get something for free. It's quite natural with the human nature. Google targeted the core weaknesses of the human and got a solid start.

It was only then, when Apple realized it was a betrayal and the company had cherish a snake in its bosom which could damage even more than their former rival Microsoft. And their initial success of the iPhone could become a bitter failure just in the nick of the time.