Its strange but I find Apple and China have similar DNA. They both have similar stringent rules and policies to keep away their competitors or their creations – you can say safeguard. I have always wondered why it is that way. But I guess it comes from the history of both Apple and China. China was by default a closed system and was the leading country in the innovation in the past. First clock, first gun powder, first paper and first advance astronomy, China had the best of minds and culture. I remember one of the presentation in discovery channel which showed how China created the gun powder, got stolen by the western civilization and when west attacked China they had more advanced mechanism than China. China’s history is full of such cases, no wonder they feel very insecure when foreign companies try to dominate Chinese market. The Great Wall of China in itself is an monument that speaks for itself.

Similarly, if we look at Apple, we know that in very early phase of their creation they had their software copied by you know who. These kinds of historical facts and experiences get into the culture of the company in a very early phase and become the trade mark of their policies.

No wonder Apple is no insecure of their technology of being exploited. But this is just an independent analysis which makes sense to me. Though every policy have their business and social value, in case of Apple we can also add the historical facts to corroborate their stance in open platform.

That is just one part of the coin which makes China and Apple similar. The next similarity is more prominent – Google. Google’s aggressive stance over openness has put the company in trouble in China. China has already banned YouTube and Google’s extensive search results. They have banned Twitter and other social networking sites. Similarly, Apple has banned Google Voice, Google’s Latitude App and now the word “Android” itself.

Recently, Tim Novikof, the developer of the Flash of Genius app had registered his app to the iPhone who was also the finalist of Android Developer Challenge. In the information details of the app, Tim had mentioned that the app was the finalist in Android Challenge to add value to its resume. But I guess Apple didn’t like that and replied to him by saying that the app contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections. In addition to that Apple replied, “”While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to remove ‘Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!’ from the Application Description.”

These kinds of God like behavior cannot be seen anywhere else than in Apple and China. I wonder how is it possible for the two to justify their position in the emerging open culture. Open platform and globalization and whole of freedom seems to make no sense to neither Apple or China. With such strong similarity in their culture and their competitor, if Apple and China could team up than it would a very tough nut to crack for Google. Apple iPhone’s movement towards Bing, Firefox’s movement towards IE and many such movements away from Google is sign that Google is in tough position of corporate battle ground.

With Apple and China having similar DNA, Google has an exact opposite to them. If you remember it clearly, before Google came to the market Yahoo was already reigning but Google took away the charm by integrating some of the third party idea with their own cleverness and intelligence. Same goes for Firefox which was hugely supported by Google for their openness until Google launched Chrome. Google created an open platform for smartphone Android and started with Motorola as the hardware platform and now Google has their own Nexus. You see the complete contrast in the way Google is to Apple and China. It will be interesting to see where the future will go with the leading companies and country having such a different ideology.

Image Source: gizmodo