Jobs’s Biographer to Page: What Part of “I’m Going to Destroy Android” Didn’t You Understand?

John Paczkowski, at AllThingsD:

During a lecture Wednesday evening at the U.K.’s Royal Institution, Isaacson took issue with Page’s remarks, stressing that Jobs was hardly kidding around when he threatened to destroy Android, which he lambasted as a stolen product. “[Apple's iOS] is almost copied verbatim by Android,” Isaacson said as reported by Macworld UK. “And then they licence it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated [Steve]. It wasn’t a matter of money. He said: ‘You can’t pay me off, I’m here to destroy you.’” The actual quote, verbatim, from Jobs to Isaacson was this: “Our lawsuit is saying, ‘Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.’ Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products — Android, Google Docs — are shit.” John Packzowski sums up: That’s a rant uttered for show? A little anecdote to give Apple employees an “obvious competitor … to rally around”? Hardly. If you want to talk about things that are for show, Larry, here’s a good one: Don’t be evil.