It is often funny what reporters find interesting…at a London event run by a UK newspaper, The Financial Times, Schmidt had to recollect his time on Apple’s Board of Directors. Yes, while Google’s CEO from 2001 until 2011 – he is now called the Executive Chairman – Eric Schmidt was also served as a director on the board of Apple between 2006 and 2009 when Steve Jobs was still manning the controls…strange bedfellows, to say the least. However, emails and memos have shown that, arguably, the two most powerful figures in the technology field often bumped heads, but also ‘shook hands’ and agreed to many ‘arrangements’ to benefit both companies. And as long as Google stayed in the ‘search and software’ business and stayed out of the ‘hardware (iPhone) business’ things were fine. However, once Google started with Android, their relationship turned sour and, as Jobs put it, he declared “thermonuclear war” on Google because he felt Google stole iOS concepts to develop Android.
Having his fingers in both operations caused some issues and Schmidt said, “Steve (Jobs) and I talked about two things that overlapped. One was what became Chrome (Google’s Web browser, which competed with Apple’s Safari browser), and one was what became Android. Apple did not mind the Chrome vs Safari issues, but they really did mind the iOS vs Android issues.”
What Jobs would do, Schmidt said, is have him step out of the board meetings whenever the Apple Phone was discussed and after a while, Jobs and Schmidt both agreed, “it just didn’t feel right.” Schmidt said he did what anybody would do in that sticky situation…he stepped down off the board and said, “I resigned for the right reasons.”
Schmidt and Jobs met in 1993 – Schmidt was working for Sun Microsystems and Jobs at NeXT, the company he founded after being ‘let go’ from Apple. According to Schmidt and Rosenberg’s book, “How Google Works,” it was after much discussion between Jobs and Schmidt about conflicts of interest, that Schmidt joined Apple’s board. But today, the competition is more “brutal” than ever in their battle over mobile supremacy and Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook and Schmidt are constantly taking jabs at each other’s companies…generally started by Cook’s remarks.
It would be interesting to see what Apple would be doing had Steve Jobs still manned the reins…please hit us up in on our Google+ Page and let us know what you think about the Google-Apple battle…as always, we would love to hear from you.