Google’s rivalries are becoming pretty well-known these days: Google vs. Apple, Google vs. Microsoft / Bing, Google vs. Facebook, etc. The list could probably go on now that Google is simply one of the most important businesses in the world. It has products and services in an increasingly broad number of industries, so it’s natural that competition will arise.
Surprisingly enough, Google’s recent CEO (now executive chairman) Eric Schmidt used to serve on the board of directors for Apple. Wait a minute, that’s like sworn enemies getting together for tea time, isn’t it? Well, Schmidt did leave the board once the two companies became more competitive with one another, and the competition has only grown since then.
Schmidt was recently interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, and he used the opportunity to talk about recent developments between Google and Apple. Some of the biggest recent changes, of course, centered around Apple’s decisions for the iOS6, with a replacement map app and other vital changes to the home screens of Apple devices.
Obviously, we would have preferred them to use our maps. They threw YouTube off the home screen [of iPhones and iPads]. I’m not quite sure why they did that. The press would like to write the sort of teenage model of competition, which is, ‘I have a gun, you have a gun, who shoots first?’
The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they’ve actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They’re not sending bombs at each other. I think both Tim [Cook, Apple’s CEO] and Larry [Page, Google’s CEO], the sort of successors to Steve [Jobs] and me if you will, have an understanding of this state model. When they and their teams meet, they have just a long list of things to talk about.
So, if everyone read to act like adults, does that mean that we can get over all of the legal battles and patent junk?
Apple and Google are well aware of the legal strategies of each other. Part of the conversations that are going on all the time is to talk about them. It’s extremely curious that Apple has chosen to sue Google’s partners and not Google itself.
Hmm… maybe we’re not all ready to be done with court battles just yet. Schmidt does raise an interesting point here, and it seems rather inevitable that Apple and Google will directly face each other in court someday soon. Oh, the lawsuit that will be.
Source: CNET