> it's incorrect to state that Google was doing Android in response to the iPhone.

Yeah sure, but pre-iPhone Android phones looked and worked very differently from modern Android phones. Google knew it needed to get into mobile phones; it's just that at that time it thought its competitor was Microsoft with its Windows CE phones, or BlackBerry. Google had a major pivot in Android development in 2007. Take a look at what Android phones looked like before the iPhone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HTC_HT722G700375_20080211... This was the "Sooner" phone built in 2006–7.