After unveiling Chrome OS this week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he will consider recusing himself from Apple’s board. The Chrome OS launch adds another dimension to the areas in which Apple and Google compete with one another.
In speaking to reporters at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, Schmidt said, “I’ll talk to the Apple people. At the moment, there’s no issue.” Schmidt has already been taking leave from any Apple board meeting in which the iPhone was a hot topic. Obviously Google competes directly with the iPhone with their Android operating system.
Under federal law, no person can sit on the two board of two companies if it decreases competition between them. Schmidt’s been trying to avoid these kind of questions by opting out of certain meetings, but you kinda have to wonder what goes on behind closed doors. It’s not any kind of surprise that the FTC is curious, too.
Like Schmidt said, though, for now there’s nothing to worry about. I guess we’ll have to see what happens in the coming months for both Apple and Google.
It’s getting hard to quantify success of Apple’s iPhone. The iPhone 3GS was the quietest launch of the product line so far, yet they managed to go through a million phones in the first weekend alone, and without too many hangups.
