Compare Android to Windows Phone, Android tablets to the Surface, and the Lumia to the Galaxy Nexus.
Google and their partners could have taken the high road and created their own take on what a touch screen phone OS is, but instead they took the low road and did a wholesale look and feel copy and paste job of iOS to get scale.
Copying look and feel isn't actual wrongdoing, but it's certainly not the high road.
Now Apple is taking the low road and trying to smack the fuck down Google legally, instead of taking the high road and competing on its own merits.
Both companies have taken the low road, and both companies are culpable here- no one comes out looking good in this story.
>>but instead they took the low road and did a wholesale look and feel copy and paste job of iOS to get scale.<<
You take this as a fact instead of a subjective opinion of few that it really is. I've never seen anyone mistake an Android for an iPhone. The user-experience is entirely different and different people like both for different reasons. Also I don't think copying "look and feel" is how you build scale... maybe a cheaper, poorer quality alternative that sells on the down-low in some guerrilla market.. but definitely not a viable competitor that scales faster than the originator of that "look and feel"
If we're comparing current iterations. Android now looks nothing like ios and in actuality ios is looking more like android. Adding polish and bigger icons for touch to existing ui was all Apple did. Objectively look back at early Blackberry and Nokia phones. Where they they completely innovated on was multitouch and getting rid of the stylus.
I didn't mean to discount their accomplishments as I do think they made huge strides in the pushing of manufacturing of mobile components along with pushing the competition. But the look of grid icons, and pim applications has relatively remained unchanged.
I really don't want to get into a stupid religious war about whether Android is a blatant copy of iOS or not. Let's grant, just for the sake of brevity, that Android is an identical copy of iOS.
There's still a world of difference between that and using government violence to ban a competitor from business.
Google and their partners could have taken the high road and created their own take on what a touch screen phone OS is, but instead they took the low road and did a wholesale look and feel copy and paste job of iOS to get scale.
Copying look and feel isn't actual wrongdoing, but it's certainly not the high road.
Now Apple is taking the low road and trying to smack the fuck down Google legally, instead of taking the high road and competing on its own merits.
Both companies have taken the low road, and both companies are culpable here- no one comes out looking good in this story.