Gregory's Server
If you were in the US in late '09 and consumed any mass media at all, you might still have dreams where Verizon flogs the Motorola Droid at you with teenage boy imagery. Real Lynx body spray territory.
That happened on the back of this same of desperation. Giving up the fundamental software stack, and doing heavy co-marketing for a single vendor's hardware launch, was not where telcos wanted to be (spoiler: still isn't, which is why we can't have nice things).
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
For its part, the Android team played this freakout like a fiddle. In a truly ungoogly way, they demanded separate infrastructure, separate cafes, etc. etc. And they got it. There are lots of reasons to loathe Andy Rubin, but what he (and the Plus crew around the same time) helped do to the culture can't be overstated. He wanted a little kingdom to run like a petty tyrant, and he got it. Android was Not Google.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac