Google's Sundar Pichai Is the Most Powerful Man in Mobile

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Samsung introduced new software for its tablets, called the Magazine UX. This was a revamped interface that resembled the table of contents in a magazine, allowing users to click directly into videos and articles. Manufacturers often apply their own design flourishes to Android, and this one looked good—not groundbreaking, maybe—but slick, intuitive, and completely unobjectionable.

Behind the scenes, though, the announcement enraged executives at Google, the company that owns and administers Android. Magazine UX hid Google services such as its Play apps store and required Android users and application developers to learn an entirely new set of behaviors for Samsung devices. The South Koreans were relegating Google to the background.