New Book Reveals Apple's Steve Jobs Was First Choice for Google CEO

A Reader notes, Steven Levy's latest book, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives, lifts the lid on the secretive world of Google, revealing how the founders fell out with Apple's Steve Jobs and what happened in the search engine's exit from China. Levy claims that when Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were on the hunt for a chief executive they wanted Steve Jobs to take the job. Obviously, he didn't, and later the two companies became fierce rivals rather than allies.

Comments

Wired has it this month

[scotch51]

Actually Jobs was choice number 3, after Sergey and Larry as co-CEO.

Wired has it this month, from the same author. Oddly I don't recall a book reference.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/

Re:Surprised Jobs Didn't Steal Something...

[improfane]

Jobs did steal, he pocketed cash that was meant for Steve Wozniak.

http://www.woz.org/letters/general/91.html

Re:good thing

[the linux geek]

WebKit was a derivative of KHTML, a GPL'd system.

Re:Surprised Jobs Didn't Steal Something...

[pushing-robot]

So If I didn't pay you a small sum of money—money I never said I'd pay you—and then invested said money in a company which gave you a job doing exactly what you always wanted to do, which you worked at for five years and retired at 30 a multi-millionaire, I'd be screwing you over?

Oh, and if you'd rather hear from Woz himself:

Comment from E-mail:
According to the site, you resigned from Apple. Is this true? And was you actually cheated by Jobs for $5000?

Woz:
No, I never resigned from Apple, and I still receive a small paycheck because I want to be an employee forever. The press constantly tries to make it out that Steve and I are enemies but we are not and have not been. You'll find virtually no negative words and definitely not a single person who ever saw us argue or fight. It's just something that the press likes to say. The Wall Street Journal once printed that I was leaving Apple because I was disgusted, even though I'd told the reporter that was not the case. If it were true, it's hard to imagine me staying on the payroll with employee agreements in effect. Every book from then on printed that story and it became history.

I'm sorry that the story about Steve cheating me ever got out. First, it concerns something from long ago and even our memories are suspect. Second, it's good to forgive small things. Third, I would have gladly split money the way it was if he just said that he needed it. We were both like that. For example, around that time Steve went to India and ran into someone who had lost their plane ticket home. Steve actually gave that person his own ticket. Steve had no money but trusted the person to replace it, and sure enough the replacement was mailed to him and he got home.

I got a great excuse to design a video game for Atari and that was worth more than any money to me. If I'd gotten more money, I might have wound up buying a computer kit or constructing a different kind. Many good things about the Apple I and Apple ][ came from not being able to afford expensive parts.