AT&T Ceo Randall Stephenson has stated that he isn’t worried about Verizon’s close ties with Google, and their plethora of Android phones. He says that AT&T’s relationship with Android is blooming, and he’s not concerned with the competition.

While AT&T may have released the Motorola Backflip and will soon be releasing the HTC Aria, we can see AT&T’s anti-Google stance on net neutrality shine forth in the decisions on limiting features on these phones. Stephenson also says that he doesn’t like the way Google insists on having their own search engine as foremost on their devices (the Backflip, AT&T’s first Android device, used Yahoo! for its search engine) and says that this choice from Google is very anti-open-source. Of course, this is coming from the CEO of the company that has taken on Apple’s mobile platform, the most notably closed off mobile OS on the market. He also seems to find it strange that Google didn’t get more media attention with their open wifi sniffing fiasco, which he chalks up to the recent iPad security breach which revealed thousands of potentially private email addresses, which came out roughly around the same time.

Verizon, on the other hand, has locked in even tighter with the mobile giant, with it’s declaration and expansion on the Droid name, as well as their variety of other Android-based devices… and don’t show any signs of slowing down any time soon.

[via wsj]

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