Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board of Directors
August 30, 2006 1 Comment
Apple has recently announced that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be joining the Apple board of directors. People seem to think this will mean more support for Mac OS X in Google products, but it hasn't exactly worked out that way for Oracle or Intuit (Larry Ellison and Bill Campbell have also been on the Apple board in the past). I've always found it ironic that Safari defaults to using Google for search, yet many Google apps either don't run at all or run degraded in Safari. I'd guess this is more an Apple response to the Microsoft Zune. Whatever the reasons, it's clear that there is definite potential for some partnerships that benefit both companies here. Google searches for music giving the iTunes store as an option, being able to purchase videos from Google Video in iTunes, etc. Both companies are very heavy into digital media, without a lot of overlap. Should be interesting to see where this leads 18 months or so out (and if you're a regular reader of my blog, it's sure starting to look like 18-24 months out is going to be an interesting time, at least from a tech standpoint).
–jeremy
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Jeremy's Blog 
Apple/Google deals because of this? Wouldn't Eric promoting such deals as an Apple board member/Google CEO constitute a conflict of interest? I would love to see both companies be successful, and partnerships may be beneficial to both these companies' bottom line and the users, but I suspect this may have more to do with Apple trusting this high profile gentleman and more money in Schmidt's pocket.