Google rejected my smartphone idea in 2005, saying "We're a SOFTWARE company!"
In 2005, I had several rounds of interviews at Google. In interviews, I pushed my vision for what I called “Google Muse,” basically a Google-branded smart phone running lots of Google and open source software on a stripped-down version of Linux.
This was before Apple released the iPhone and just before Google bought Android. The most exciting device at the time was Nokia’s 770 Internet Tablet.
I didn’t get the job (which had nothing to do with “Google Muse” …so they probably — and with some justification — thought me nuts).
And I didn’t sell Google on my vision. Their response: “We’re a SOFTWARE company! We don’t do hardware.”
Well, even then, Google had a massive custom hardware infrastructure. So they could have done hardware. But they saw themselves as selling software services.
Five years later, Google hopes to spend $12.5 billion buying Motorola Mobility. As my wife told me after hearing the news, “You were WAY ahead of your time.”
Posted by James on Wednesday, August 17, 2011