Google’s Schmidt Leaves Apple Board – WSJ.com
“Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest,” Mr. Jobs said in a press statement. “Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s board,” Mr. Jobs said.
This doesn’t sound very amicable. When you start a press release with “unfortunately”, you’re stating flat out that the party did not cave in to what you wanted. In this case, Apple’s request to Google to not enter Apple’s core businesses. Apple’s core business is software.
Is Google a search company, an advertising company, or a software company? Does a software company aim to make the world’s information universally useful and accessible?
I think an Internet software company does – Google is a software company. The right software will make the right platform ubiquitous. Google search is the right software to make the Internet what it is today. In the past Mac software contributed to bringing the computer market where it is today, then Microsoft launched Windows, AND opened it up to multiple OEM’s. The market is changing, and this move hints at the place for software in a web-based world.
