Google chief executive joins company's board as 2 join forces to gain ground on Microsoft.
September 5, 2006 (Press Release) --
Apple gets help to fight Gates
Google chief executive joins company's board as 2 join forces to gain ground on Microsoft
John Markoff / New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO -- When Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, was named to Apple Computer's board this week, it did more than signal a potential alliance between powerful companies. It touched off a wave of speculation about the motives of the man behind the move: Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs.
"The old social networks in Silicon Valley run very deep," noted AnnaLee Saxenian, a leading scholar of the industry and dean of the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley. "And this reminds us that Silicon Valley has a common enemy to the north."
She did not even need to name the enemy she had in mind: Microsoft, the leading rival to both Jobs and Schmidt through most of their careers. Now, with the Internet era remaking the competitive landscape, their prospects for outdueling Microsoft's Windows empire may be better than ever.
Even in a valley where careers leave few degrees of separation between any two companies, the Apple announcement was remarkable. Schmidt, brought in five years ago to guide Google and its young founders to a stock offering, is Silicon Valley's consummate insider. Jobs, who spent years in the industry wilderness before retaking the helm of Apple, is its defining outsider.
But Schmidt and Jobs, both 51, share a common outlook: that computing technologies can be remarkably disruptive forces in business and society.
There are many possibilities for a complementary strategy between their companies. This week, for example, Google said it was beginning to weave together a number of services that could be a Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office. And Jobs has skillfully driven a wedge into the dominant PC computing standard established by Microsoft's Windows software and Intel's hardware -- the so-called Wintel alliance -- by recently adopting Intel's processor for Apple's Macintosh computers.
From: http://www.detnews.com/
Google chief executive joins company's board as 2 join forces to gain ground on Microsoft
John Markoff / New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO -- When Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, was named to Apple Computer's board this week, it did more than signal a potential alliance between powerful companies. It touched off a wave of speculation about the motives of the man behind the move: Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs.
"The old social networks in Silicon Valley run very deep," noted AnnaLee Saxenian, a leading scholar of the industry and dean of the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley. "And this reminds us that Silicon Valley has a common enemy to the north."
She did not even need to name the enemy she had in mind: Microsoft, the leading rival to both Jobs and Schmidt through most of their careers. Now, with the Internet era remaking the competitive landscape, their prospects for outdueling Microsoft's Windows empire may be better than ever.
Even in a valley where careers leave few degrees of separation between any two companies, the Apple announcement was remarkable. Schmidt, brought in five years ago to guide Google and its young founders to a stock offering, is Silicon Valley's consummate insider. Jobs, who spent years in the industry wilderness before retaking the helm of Apple, is its defining outsider.
But Schmidt and Jobs, both 51, share a common outlook: that computing technologies can be remarkably disruptive forces in business and society.
There are many possibilities for a complementary strategy between their companies. This week, for example, Google said it was beginning to weave together a number of services that could be a Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office. And Jobs has skillfully driven a wedge into the dominant PC computing standard established by Microsoft's Windows software and Intel's hardware -- the so-called Wintel alliance -- by recently adopting Intel's processor for Apple's Macintosh computers.
From: http://www.detnews.com/
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