Android ‘started over’ the day the iPhone was announced

Apple’s boast that the iPhone changed everything about the mobile industry has received some support from one of Android’s original software architects. Chris DeSalvo, who worked alongside Andy Rubin at Danger before joining Google to build its mobile OS, says that the iPhone’s announcement forced everyone on his team to realize that they “are going to have to start over”.

In 2005, on Google’s sprawling, college-like campus, the most secret and ambitious of many, many teams was Google’s own smartphone effort—the Android project. Tucked in a first-floor corner of Google’s Building 44, surrounded by Google ad reps, its four dozen engineers thought that they were on track to deliver a revolutionary device that would change the mobile phone industry forever.