Update: David rightly points out in the comments that we shouldn’t have called Tim Bray a Google exec, he’s is in fact set to be a Google employee but has not taken up his role yet. We should also give Tim props as co-inventor of XML.
The iPhone has been slammed by a newly hired Google Android exec. Tim Bray, newly appointed as an Android developer advocate, took to his blog to slam the iPhone in another sign of the growing battle between Apple and Google.
Bray brands the iPhone “a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.”
Echoing recent attacks by HP and Adobe on the iPhone for not being open, Bray says: “The iPhone vision of the mobile internet’s future omits controversy, sex and freedom but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what.”
Apple has stringent rules for app developers as the recent revelation of its iPhone developer contract by the Electronic Freedom Foundation showed.
But while Apple has recently culled explicit apps from the iTunes App Store and rejected apps, most famously Google Voice, it has also attracted hundreds of eager iPhone app developers and the iPad is likely to swell there numbers.
Bray does admit in his blog post that Google has a problem with its unofficial “Don’t be evil motto” because it is “now too big to be purely good or in fact purely anything.” It’s also unsurprising that he “hates” the iPhone as his job is to promote Android.
Steve Jobs allegedly attacked Google in an Apple town meeting following the iPad launch in January. But Bray believes Google Android is starting to seriously compete with iPhone flagging up figures that suggest iPhone is selling 90,000 units a day while Android is shifting 60,000 units a day.
Do Android phones like the HTC Legend tempt you to ditch iPhone or are you all set for iPhone 4.0? Let us know who you’re backing in the iPhone vs Android, Google vs Apple scuffles.
Out now | £free | TBray.org (via Information Week)
