Insights into Apple co-founder Steve Jobs's vendetta against Google and his criticisms of fellow

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high-tech titans spread quickly online ahead of the Monday release of his authorised biography.

Excerpts of the book, "Steve Jobs", went viral -- especially his reported vow to annihilate Google-backed Android software for smartphones and tablets that he felt had ripped off iPhone and iPad ideas.

"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product," Jobs's biographer quoted him as saying early last year.

"I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this," he said. "I don't want your money. If you offer me $ 5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want."

Biographer Walter Isaacson's work also contains an unflattering assessment of Bill Gates, co-founder of US computer software colossus Microsoft that for decades served as the Goliath to Apple's David.

"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger," said Jobs, who went to India on a spiritual journey after dropping out of college in the 1970s.

"Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology," he added. "He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."

Reactions to the excerpts in online chat forums included comment that while Jobs changed the world with iPods, iPhones, and iPads, they were improvements on MP3 players, smartphones and tablets that had come before them.

Jobs also had blunt words for Michael Dell, chief of the eponymous computer maker based in Texas.

The biography tells of Dell saying in 1997 that if he were Jobs, he would shut down then-struggling Apple and "give the money back to shareholders."

Jobs told of responding to Dell with an email message that read: "CEOs are supposed to have class...I can see that isn't an opinion you hold."

Jobs returned to the Apple helm in 1996 and steered it to new heights -- it is now among the world's most valuable companies.

A new generation "iPhone 5" is believed to be the last Apple innovation that Jobs worked on at the Cupertino, California-based company.

In the biography, Jobs praised Apple senior vice president of industrial design Jonathan "Jony" Ive as being his partner in dreaming up devices.

"If I had a spiritual partner at Apple, it's Jony," Jobs is quoted as saying.