Google's Eric Schmidt took the opportunity (as they knew he would) to strike back at Google-critics advancing the 'shaky empire' thesis as Android continues to zoom up the smartphone charts towards one billion connect devices... and other smartphone operating systems singularly don't.

Schmidt rejected claims that Google and Samsung were in the process of falling out at the AllThingsDigital Mobile conference in New York this week, claiming that questioners were listening to Microsoft statements.

Google and Samsung were getting on fine. That was the defining Android relationship, he said.

Commentators have also recently been pointing to Facebook's home as being a threat to Google's control over its own operating system, with some going so far as to suggest that Google was probably hatching plans to block Home. Schmidt said that it would "be against our religion" to block home. On the contrary, Schmidt said the Facebook move was a "tremendous endorsement" of Android and it would anyway be counter to all its public statements "about our religion (openness) to block it.

"I think it's fantastic... this is what open source is about. It's experimentation, it's new ideas, it's creativity."