The title of the original article is perhaps poorly phrased - it is not 'Why Google Did Android' but 'Why Google was Funding Android in 2010'. My recollection is as follows:
Originally, Android started as a response to feature phones with poor (sometimes WAP-only) browsers, where the internet was started on the mobile provider's portal page and was hardly ever worth visiting. Google purchased the project that eventually became Android, and it started out looking mostly like a Blackberry clone.
Google felt like they had to pay Apple for a place on the phone - which they still do via their contract to make Google the default search provider. Previous smart phone experiences (such as blackberry) were quickly obsolete, and Google (along with several other manufacturers) started targeting that new experience.
The lead that iPhone had (as pretty much the only consumer-targeted phone with a high-quality internet experience) and Google's risk that someone like Yahoo or Bing (launched in 2009) would outbid their place as the default search provider made iPhone the existential threat. Even without the search risk, Android still deserved to be funded to target all of the markets that Apple purposely would not try to hit.
There was of course the overlap of Eric Schmidt on the board of Apple over two years after the iPhone was publicly announced. The point that Schmidt felt it was too big of a conflict of interest to remain was late 2009.
If suspect if Android hadn't come along, we'd be perhaps 6-18 months farther back on technology, with 1/3 of the world on iPhones, 1/3 on Windows Phone, and 1/3 on assorted crap phones. Nokia may have lasted long enough to have a viable competitor as well.
Originally, Android started as a response to feature phones with poor (sometimes WAP-only) browsers, where the internet was started on the mobile provider's portal page and was hardly ever worth visiting. Google purchased the project that eventually became Android, and it started out looking mostly like a Blackberry clone.
Google felt like they had to pay Apple for a place on the phone - which they still do via their contract to make Google the default search provider. Previous smart phone experiences (such as blackberry) were quickly obsolete, and Google (along with several other manufacturers) started targeting that new experience.
The lead that iPhone had (as pretty much the only consumer-targeted phone with a high-quality internet experience) and Google's risk that someone like Yahoo or Bing (launched in 2009) would outbid their place as the default search provider made iPhone the existential threat. Even without the search risk, Android still deserved to be funded to target all of the markets that Apple purposely would not try to hit.
There was of course the overlap of Eric Schmidt on the board of Apple over two years after the iPhone was publicly announced. The point that Schmidt felt it was too big of a conflict of interest to remain was late 2009.
If suspect if Android hadn't come along, we'd be perhaps 6-18 months farther back on technology, with 1/3 of the world on iPhones, 1/3 on Windows Phone, and 1/3 on assorted crap phones. Nokia may have lasted long enough to have a viable competitor as well.