No, open sourcing it had been the plan from the start. I was there, I was at the internal meetings where these plans were announced to employees.
The main impact iPhone had on Android was delaying it to redo the UI to make it nicer. Not trivial changes but not fundamental business strategy changes either.
First Android releases weren't bad at all. I'd say the UI was more 'classic' feeling and not as nicely animated than the first iPhone, but the first Android actually had far more features. And some critical ones too, like you could actually write apps for it.
> First Android releases weren't bad at all. I'd say the UI was more 'classic'
Maybe in your test labs, but on real HW it was sluggish, laggy and barely usable. Source: I owned the original Samsung Galaxy and tried some friend's HTC Magic and they were horrible. The first real good Android phone, perf wise, was IME the Galaxy S II.
The main impact iPhone had on Android was delaying it to redo the UI to make it nicer. Not trivial changes but not fundamental business strategy changes either.
First Android releases weren't bad at all. I'd say the UI was more 'classic' feeling and not as nicely animated than the first iPhone, but the first Android actually had far more features. And some critical ones too, like you could actually write apps for it.