Sundar Pichai to Tim Cook: Android’s not a toxic hell stew, it’s just a more popular operating system

Sundar-Pichai-02 Bloomberg Businessweek just published a lengthy profile and interview with Google’s head of Android and Chrome Sundar Pichai and within addressed some of Apple’s recent comments about Android. While much of the conversation circled around what we can expect from Google at this year’s developer conference and Sundar’s scheduled keynote address — wearables and TV will be a big focus— Sundar was also asked his thoughts on Apple’s recent announcements at its own WWDC developer conference earlier this month.

While noting that much of what Apple announced for iOS 8 were features that Android already had— third party keyboards, widgets, etc— Sundar said shipping a new version of Google Play every six weeks makes Android allows them to “move the platform faster than anyone else and provide a consistent layer for developers.” Next he addressed Tim Cook’s claim from WWDC that Apple is gaining lots of new customers from Android switchers:

Every piece of data I look at tells me that people are adopting Android at a faster pace than any other operating system. We are doing remarkably well… They run a great show. I take it for the value of the show… Do I worry about what they are doing? Yes. They are a great company. I think they are building a very good product and it’s vertically integrated, which helps them do certain things faster.

Sundar also attempted to tackle Tim Cook’s comments referring to Android’s security as a “toxic hell stew”:

“It must be liberating [for Apple] to wake up and think about your device, your software, and hey, ‘I can even call the chipset guys and say what the chip should be,’” he says. “I have to think about building a platform and bringing as many people along on this journey and getting it right. I believe that ultimately it’s a more powerful approach, but it’s a lot more stressful as well.”

You have to be careful when you make a $100,000 Mercedes car not to look at rest of automotive industry and make comments on it… We serve the entire breadth of the market, globally across all form factors, et cetera. Android from the ground up is designed to be very, very secure… History shows typically that malware is also targeted at the more popular operating system. So you know there is that.

The full interview is available on Bloomberg here where Sundar also confirmed Google will show off the next major Android release, TV related announcements, and its new Android Wear wearables platform.

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