Back in August, I did a blog entry explaining why Google and Apple were on a collision course with Google moving into mobile phones. The other interesting part is the clash in cultures. Google is a relatively open company, Apple is anything but. And things have heated up with reports that Apple and Microsoft are in talks over the possibility of Redmond's Bing replacing Google as the default search engine on the iPhone. This will get ugly.

Now Wired reports that Apple's Steve Jobs has come out attacking Google's "Don't be evil" mantra as "bullshit". He also gets stuck into Adobe.

"On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there's no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don't be evil mantra: "It's bullshit." Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says."

The problem for Jobs is that the future might lie in web-based applications, not mobile phone apps. But then, as Quentin Hardy from Forbes says, the two companies have different strategies when they seek to dominate the business market. "Apple, long a seller of hardware, is thinking in terms of something cheaper than a laptop, or better than a netbook. Google sees its device as a means to accessing its main businesses of Internet search and, increasingly, Internet-based office applications like word processing. The Google machine might even be subsidized like a cellphone, thrown on at a deep discount for a subscriber to Google Apps."

This is shaping up as one of the most fascinating corporate battles.