Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, was prone to hyperbole but his eulogy for the iPhone as he launched it 10 years ago was accurate: “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.”
Google was just an internet search engine then, but one of its offspring unveiled plans this week to make an entire platform — software and hardware — for driverless cars. Without the iPhone revolution, it is hard to imagine a technology company entering the transport industry, or designing a device that can steer cars around while receiving and transmitting streams of data.
For a long time, Jobs was a lone voice in the wilderness in preaching the power of uniting hardware and software, while Microsoft made a fortune by dominating software alone. Even he did not predict the potential of integrating everything from software and mobile hardware to data storage and artificial intelligence. Yet this is his legacy: the omniscient tech company.