Daren later added, “Rosenberg suggested that we give up Milk and
adopt Google Music as a default [app]. In return, he would customize a
version of Google Music just for Samsung.”
Daren resisted, and Samsung pushed on with its software crusade. The
South Koreans wanted to rework Google’s open-source Android operating
system into its own variant, a strategic move that would distinguish
Samsung from the muddy mess of hardware manufacturers converging on
an increasingly homogeneous and accepted standard for smartphone design.
In January 2014, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, J.K.
Shin had unveiled Samsung’s new design flourish for the Galaxy Note,
called the Magazine UX. Samsung’s interface designers were using in-house
software called TouchWiz to modify their operating system.
It was “a revamped interface that resembled the table of contents in a
magazine, allowing users to click directly into videos and articles,” reported
Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone. “Manufacturers often apply their
own design flourishes to Android, and this one looked good—not
groundbreaking, maybe—but slick, intuitive, and completely
unobjectionable.”
Behind the scenes, Google executives were furious; the Magazine UX
was an affront to their own software. It hid the Google Play app store and
forced Android users to use something other than Google’s design.
It was a dangerous prospect: If Galaxy fans started learning a new user
interface, they might have trouble going back to Google’s original Android
variant. Google’s designs could fade into obsolescence.
Google’s Android chief, Sundar Pichai, was dispatched to deal with
Samsung. The son of a factory manager, Pichai had grown up in India and
moved to the United States after college, getting master’s degrees from
Stanford and the Wharton School.
Pichai was diplomatic and a good negotiator, the type of emissary you
would want handling sensitive disputes with companies you depend on. But
he also knew the importance of expressing Google’s strategic frustration, of
turning up the dial.
“Pichai set up a series of meetings with J.K. Shin, chief executive
officer of Samsung Mobile Communications, at the Wynn hotel on the
Vegas strip, at Google’s offices in Mountain View, Calif., and again in
February at the Mobile World Congress convention in Barcelona,”
Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone reported. “Pichai says they held