So Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple's board. Schmidt has been on Google's board since 2001 and on Apple's board since 2006. The truth is, this was always going to happen. Google and Apple are two asteroids on a collision course. The ultimate irony is that Google is now a big threat to Apple. And it makes anything that clumsy old Microsoft out up look like child's play.
As Steve Jobs suggested in a statement, Schmidt's spot on the board was untenable with Google moving into Apple territory.
Google has moved into computer and mobile-phone software, putting itself in direct competition to Apple's products. The resignation doesn't seem to have cut much ice with the Federal Trade Commission which had been investigating whether the companies were breaking antitrust law by sharing board members which in turn could damage competition in such areas as phone software and services. In a statement, Bureau of Competition director Richard Feinstein said the interlocking directorates of the companies will still be investigated. GENENTECH Inc Chairman Arthur Levinson also serves as director at both Apple and Google.
But what does that mean for Apple and Google? Erick Schonfeld in TechCrunch says the companies were on a collision course over the development of the mobile web. Google wants it to be as open as the Internet, Apple is anything but open.
He writes: "Schmidt had to go. Not just because of the dust-up with the FCC and the Google Voice app. But because Google has a different set of agendas which already are putting strains on the relationship. Google wants to diminish the importance of any single computing device in favor of Web apps which sit in the cloud and are accessible from all devices-mobile phones, Macbooks, Dell laptops, or whatever. As much as is physically possible, it wants to replace the operating system with the Web."
no comment untill now