Eric Schmidt on Where Google Is Headed
Maria Bartiromo talks to the Google CEO about where the opportunities are in the future — The news on Aug. 3 that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt was resigning from the board of Apple (AAPL) took many by surprise.
Context & Ripple Effects
Eric Schmidt's resignation from Apple's board on Aug. 3 lands just three months after Google publicly insisted he hadn't considered quitting the seat, making the reversal itself the story. The exit follows months of deepening friction between the two companies over iPhone software distribution, including New York Times reporting that Google planned to retool Google Voice as a Web-based app for the iPhone.
The Business Week interview with Maria Bartiromo is Schmidt's first extended public airing of Google's forward agenda since stepping off the board, and it extends a run of high-profile appearances this year — including a Financial Times 'View from the Top' session in May — that have kept him out front while Google and Apple's interests increasingly collide rather than complement each other.
First-order effects
- Apple loses its most prominent inside channel into Google's plans just as the two firms contest overlapping territory in mobile apps, leaving the board seat's information bridge gone at the moment it mattered most.
- Schmidt gains freedom to speak publicly about Google's strategy without Apple fiduciary constraints, which the Bartiromo interview immediately exercises.
Second-order effects
- The resignation forces both companies to manage their rivalry openly rather than through personal ties — expect closer scrutiny of every remaining Google-Apple entanglement, including whether Google Voice reaches iPhone users through the browser route NYT reported rather than native distribution.
- Microsoft, which UBS analyst Maynard Um says is being undercut by the iPhone even in enterprise accounts, now faces two former allies competing against it separately instead of as a loose anti-Microsoft bloc.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the 2000s model of interlocking Silicon Valley boards as a substitute for formal partnership gives way to hard-edged platform competition, with regulators and investors reading executive departures as signals of strategic divorce rather than governance housekeeping.
The trend: The Google-Apple alliance built during the PC era is unwinding into direct mobile-platform rivalry, with shared-board arrangements the first casualty.