New Appointments at Google, Apple, Show Depth of Enmity Between the Two

Tim Bray, legendary software developer and programmer, is off to Google. He announced his decision this morning, three weeks on from his resignation from Sun Microsystems, which came with a searing critique of Apple.

Meanwhile, a key player on the Mountain View campus, RJ Pittman, worked his final day last week and is off to Cupertino. Confused? So are we--but mostly over how Apple and Google, former BFFs, have fallen out. Bray, who was developer of Web Technologies at Sun, covered the reasons for his move on his blog. It was, he said, mainly about Android. The Google OS was open-source, developer friendly, and mobile Internet is, as he sees it, the future. Google was, he said "too big to be purely good or in fact purely anything," but he was down with the company philosophy. At the end of his list of reasons to move was a five-word sentence, "I'll enjoy competing with Apple." Bray elucidated his reasons in the next paragraph: "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. It's 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. I hate it."