Eventually, we on the outside caught wind of the conflict. As early as January 2008, Jobs was slighting Android, and a year after that we heard that Apple had stopped multitouch on Android altogether. We watched things get publicly uncomfortable when Apple rejected Google Voice from the app store. And soon we saw their acquisitions become undeniably competitive, Apple allegedly feeling that Google "stole" AdMob from them and preemptively gobbling up Lala in return. On the AdMob acquisition, the article reveals that Apple had a 45-day window in which it could have purchased the company for $600 million, but they stalled and Google swept in to outbid them. After this move, a source says, "Mr. Jobs speculated that AdMob might have violated its legal obligations, with help from Google."

At the time, the AdMob saga suggested that the stakes were being raised in the face-off, and Apple's recent patent infringement suit against HTC was just further confirmation that the bad blood was turning into a blood bath.

In January we heard that Apple was in talks with Microsoft to replace Google with Bing as the default search engine on iPhones and iPads, and the Times article ends by mentioning that "One Apple employee says that Qi Lu, the president of Microsoft's online services division, was recently seen visiting Apple's campus in Cupertino to discuss such a deal."