Rare photos show Steve Jobs having lunch with Larry Page

Apple and Google are two of the biggest companies in the tech industry that compete with each other not only in terms of the software ecosystem but also hardware. But long before the two companies became the industry’s biggest competitors, their founders held a close relationship with one another. Now, a former Google has shared images of the Apple founder Steve Jobs having lunch with the Google executives.

Jason Shellen used to work on Blogger at Google in early 2000s before becoming the project manager for Google reader. On late Thursday evening he took to Twitter to share images of Jobs having lunch with Larry Page at one of Google’s cafeterias. The images date back to circa August 2007 shortly after the first iPhones became available. They were taken covertly using a Palm Treo 680.

“...I think this was taken on a Treo 680 held up to my face surreptitiously,” the industry veteran wrote in another Tweet.

Google’s executive team shared a close relationship with Jobs. According to a report by The New York Times, Google’ founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin “considered Jobs a mentor” and were regular visitors to his Cupertino, California office.

Their relationship soured after Google released Android, which Apple considered a threat. “We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Jobs reportedly said in an all-hands meeting after the introduction of the iPad. He believed that Google wanted to “kill the iPhone”. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them,” the publication reported the late Apple founder as saying in the meeting.