Schmidt plans talks with Apple over board role
Google's Eric Schmidt will discuss his board role at Apple with the company following the announcment of Chrome OS.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET)Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday that he plans to discuss his role on the board of directors at Apple with the company following Google's announcement that it is working on an operating system for personal computers.
Schmidt has served on Apple's board since 2006. He has already implemented a policy of recusing himself from discussions involving the iPhone at Apple, given that Google's Android software competes with the iPhone for consumer and developer attention, but before his appearance at the Sun Valley media conference Thursday, he had not responded to direct inquires about whether he'll now have to do something similar when Mac OS X development is discussed at Apple.
While the announcement of Google's Chrome OS won't result in any products that compete with Apple until 2010--at the earliest--Schmidt told attendees at the conference, sponsored by Allen & Co., that he'll talk the situation over with Apple at some point in the future. Google and Apple have already reportedly drawn interest from the Federal Trade Commission over Schmidt's role on that board, which isn't likely to subside given Google's new direction.
Schmidt, who appeared on stage at the conference with Google co-founder Larry Page, also said that Page and Sergey Brin needed to talk him into the Chrome browser and OS project at first. "Having come through the bruising browser wars, I didn't want to do that again," the Wall Street Journal's Digits blog quoted him saying in response to questions about Chrome OS. Once Schmidt saw a demo, however, he obviously changed his mind.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
Google released an open source OS for manufacturers to use on their phones. Since no one but Apple is allowed to make an iPhone, then Android doesn't really compete against it. If the iPhone OS X port was freely available for any manufacturer to use, then YES, there would be a conflict based on the competition.
The same should hold true for Chrome OS... since it's a linux distro designed to run on netbooks/net-tops for the time being, then there is no competition since Apple does not sell netbooks.
If the Chrome OS was being designed to run on Mac's and Android was able to replace the OS on the iPhone, you might have a case, but that's not how it's going right now.
If Schmidt has to recuse himself from iPhone conversations, and recuse himself from Mac conversations (because Chrome OS will require a hardware partner ecosystem as well), then what's left -- ipod discussions??
what i mean by that is people don't simply buy an hp or a mac or an iPhone or an HTC and leave it up to the company that makes the hardware to decide what OS runs on it, people make a decision to buy a computer or phone based at least partly on the OS running on it, meaning they're at least partly deciding between a computer with chrome OS, windows, linux or OSX or deciding between a smartphone with android, mobile OSX or windows mobile
the point being that competition stems from consumers choosing where to spend their money, not hardware makers choosing what OS to use, so if there is an option to buy computers or smartphones running different operating systems then those OSs are automatically competing
if i need to hammer the point in any further i'll say this, microsoft has practically the same strategy as google in computers and smartphones with regards to distribution and not selling hardware, so saying google isn't competing with apple is like saying micrsoft isn't competing with apple either, and i dare you to turn on the tv for a few hours without seeing a commercial that would beg to differ
It's going to be a browser based OS... it really won't have anything in common with OS X other than any similarities between BSD and Linux.
- by lrd123 July 10, 2009 2:42 PM PDT
- I'd bet they'll be laying off more people than selling there toilet bowl Chrome OS.
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