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Google CEO Schmidt Leaves Apple Board
Jerod Venema writes "Today, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board of directors, citing conflicts of interest. Apple has released a statement that the company and Schmidt reached a decision to split ties as Google enters new markets that directly compete with Apple's iPhone and Mac operating systems. Schmidt had recused himself of portions of Apple's board meetings when conflicts of interest or anything Google-related arose. But Steve Jobs said Schmidt would have to leave much larger portions of the meetings after Google announced last month that it would enter the operating system sphere."
Surely this has nothing to do with Google Voice being rejected from the App Store.
Well if you look
Safari => chrome
Mac os => google os
iphone => android
xserve =>google server farms
probably the only thing he didn't have to recuse himself from would be mp3 players....
Linkedin http://in.linkedin.com/in/robinsaikatchatterjee
I thought he was just being dull at meetings...
Given that he was leaving Apple bored
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
don't forget the pr0n!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Yeah, the internal politics of two of the biggest companies in personal computing in the wake of the Google Voice debacle are of absolutely no interest to anyone. What we need is wiring diagrams, dammit.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
yeah, Idle's not had a new story in 4 days
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
coming in iPhone OS 4
Apple is already in bed with Microsoft and ActiveSync for iphone and Snow Leopard email connection to MS Exchange. Why not license mapping software as well?
I thought Microsoft had a big stake in Apple (which would assume that someone from MS would be on Apple's board). maybe i'm wrong.
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
nothing more to say
nevermind. it was 150mil stake of non-voting stock. So I guess no board of directors position.
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
Genentech Inc. Chairman Arthur Levinson also serves as a director on both boards. The Feds are investigating that as well. What about him? The news story keep mentioning that Schmidt would recuse himself from discussions related to Google, what about Levinson? Did he recuse himself from both Google and Apple meetings when the other was being discussed?
Just curious.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
don't forget the pr0n!
I don't think he had to recuse himself from those parts of the board meetings.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
By that reason, Google should switch to VirtualEarth for maps. Google is already in bed with Microsoft and ActiveSync for Google Apps. Why not license mapping software as well?
Why is Jobs telling the Board what to do? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?
I've always said that fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. It's about time Apple realized that.
-Anonymous CEO
apple doesn't have it's own mapping software for one. google needs a reason to keep it's eleventy billion servers running and doing something
They're nowhere near going down. Even if they get fined for anti-trust, they'll get past it and do fine. If they're forced to open up their app store, it may even be good for them in the long run. At this point it probably is just a routine conflict of interest, but the timing adds some entertainment value.
"Don't be Evil"
I wish people would stop propagating such silly misinformation. It read more like "Don't Panic" and it was never a motto, just a note poorly scribbled on a towel that was used as a replacement air filter for the first Google Server.
Also, I don't think it exists anymore. I may be wrong, but I assume you're referring to the stock that Microsoft bought in the late 90s, which I believe they sold after a couple years. Too bad, too, because I'm guessing the stock is worth a lot more now, and Microsoft would have made a nice little profit if they'd kept their investment.
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html
Read #6.
It's more than a towel, it's their ideals.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
How so?
Just another proletarian malcontent.
Schmidt resigning from the Apple board was obviously necessitated by the Google/Apple/AT&T conflict that is being reviewed by the FCC. I argue that AT&T is forcing the hand of Apple. Apple has no reason to be concerned about Google Voice, but AT&T and the other wireless carriers have good reason to be terrified of Google Voice if network neutrality is applied to wireless carriers.
In its current incarnation the worse thing Google Voice can do to AT&T is to conveniently allow iPhone users to make inexpensive international calls without going through AT&T. Google Voice uses VoIP to transmit calls, but Google is not a phone service provider.
But what if the logical thing happened and Google became a phone service provider? And what if AT&T lost the right to cripple cell phones that use their network? And what if, in the absence of AT&Tâ(TM)s arm-twisting, Apple now allowed Google to create an optimized app?
Given the above the following will likely occur:
-Since Google is now a phone provider I can now port my current iPhone number over to Google. I then acquire a brand new cell phone number from AT&T. I have Google Voice forward my calls to my original number to my new AT&T number; I can now completely forget about my new number.
When people call my old number I can now seamlessly receive the call on my iPhone. When I use my iPhone to dial a friends number the Google Voice app will automatically call a local number instead that belongs to Google and then Google will connect me to my friends number. My friend's caller ID will see my original old phone number!
Since the phone is no longer crippled full use of WiFi will be enabled. Whenever you are in a WiFi hotspot all calls made either from or to your iPhone will go over WiFi. You can seamlessly use your iPhone at home making a limitless number of free calls. Does AT&T have spotty reception in your house? Problem solved! You don't even have to pay hundreds of dollars for AT&T's idiotic upcoming femtocell. The capacity of the cellular network is also improved as so many people are now bypassing it.
-Let's take this further and apply the potential of Google Voice to the international traveler. Let's say that you plan on going to several European countries and you want to take your iPhone; you will be robbed blind by AT&T if you casually used your phone.
But what if before you paid Google a nominal fee to use your phone in any country you might potentially go to? Google voice should be able to download onto your phone the SIM card data for a locally purchased pay-for-use SIM card. Each account will have one minute of talk time on it. The moment you arrive in a country your iPhone will automatically use that cell phone time to call a local Google number; Google will then add local minutes to that particular account. When you call a US number your phone will actually dial a local Google number that will then use VoIP to allow you to call anywhere in the world at the cheapest possible rate. People in the US will seamlessly reach you by calling your usual number. If you need to give your phone number to locals who don't want to make an international call to reach you then you can give them the local SIM phone number. Once again WiFi calls will be free and seamless.
-Let's apply this again to the US. Your iPhone can contain SIM card info from multiple providers so that your phone can seamlessly switch between providers based on signal strength/capacity/price.
The FCC is also considering forcing the large cell phone providers to sell capacity to smaller providers at non price-gouging rates. Google can purchase bandwidth at a far cheaper price than a private individual can. Now this iPhone with the Google Voice app can pick the cheapest/best cell service available at a particular location. (I picture more combination GSM/CDMA phones being sold).
The cell phone companies, for the first time, will be forced to let an honest market decide the price of their services instead of their abusive oligopoly-driven price gouging. The consumer will get a much better product at a much cheaper price. It is easy to see why all of the wireless providers would be terrified of such a future.
I'm happy for these news because rumours have it that Google didn't implement some features such as multitouch in Android at Apple's request.
Now that they aren't buddy-buddy anymore, maybe Google will say fuck it and implement those features anyway (much as Palm did with the Pré).
Looking forward to that multitouch, and hopefully for those spring animations when a list reaches the end (in Android there isn't any visual feedback when you reach the end of a list except for the mini scrollbar on the right).
Let me make some corrections to your observations. Google voice does not use VOIP at all, for anything. Making a call from a cell phone through google voice sends the call request via a data connection, to which googles servers initiate two calls. One to your cell phone, and another to your party. The google voice software on the cell phone intercepts the incoming call and answers it, and then waits for the other party to pick up... If you're webapp crippled on an iphone, the calls are still routed over normal calls using normal minutes between your phone and the GV servers. Here is what is lost for each party Apple looses control over some or all of your contacts as google voice will use your google contacts, and those stored in your phone. On android, they are one and the same. AT&T looses the ability to see who you are calling and whatever aggregate crap they generate from that to sell to whoever... Why this is valuable to them or how they even have legal authority to sell it is beyond me. They also loose 50% of the SMS revenue from the account as outbound SMS can be done over data.
They saw increasing revenue and profit in every single division of the company. Compare this to Microsoft, who last quarter saw:
Microsoft saw billion dollar reductions in revenue in both the windows (Client) and office (Business) divisions, and it's xbox (entertainment) and search (on-line) divisions were actually in the red and are losing the company money.
Apple is not a "ship going down", this statement is demonstrably false, people are even calling it recession proof. You could say that about Microsoft however and not be contradicted by facts.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Beyond that, I think I'm going to give up on poking fun at Apple as I don't really have the karma for it.
This is all about Android, which is poised to knock off the iPhone this fall as over 18 new devices hit the market (from Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC). Android is the game changer, and both Google and Apple know it.
-- Mike
As far as VOIP goes I think the GP poster was alluding to the way things are headed. If you get used to dialing through Google Voice it will eventually be trivial for Google Voice to determine if it should use VOIP or the cell network and chose whatever is cheaper.
My contact list is already 3-way synced with my iphone, google contacts, and address book. It works surprisingly well.
SMS revenue for AT&T is huge. All the cell phone companies screw you in their own way, AT&Ts is through SMS. Any other way to cut out AT&T to reliably send and receive SMS messages is something they would stop immediately.
Oops, sorry - I mistook it for some knee-jerk anti-Google sentiment, and wanted to know what you had to say on the matter! Glad I asked instead of responding with some knee-jerk anti-anti-Google sentiment. ;)
It's been interesting watching Apple and Google get more negative comments on Slashdot over the last few months (or the last couple of years in Apple's case). This story makes me wonder if a part of the Slashdot community will take sides in some sort of Google vs. Apple drama. Apple does seem to have a way of getting people to defend them against criticism, both real and imagined... I guess the reactions to your comment (including mine) seem to indicate Google has a similar following here on Slashdot!
Btw, taken the way it was intended, your OP is funny.
Just another proletarian malcontent.
Actually there was talk of him resigning from the board long before the Google Voice app was rejected.
Even more chatter prior to that due to conflict of interest on various topics dating back to Feb of this year
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/03/justice_department_investigating_hiring_practices_of_apple_others.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/04/ftc_investigating_antitrust_ties_between_apple_google.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/10/multi_touch_omitted_from_android_at_apples_request_report.html
Any other way to cut out AT&T to reliably send and receive SMS messages is something they would stop immediately.
They can't stop the cheaper alternative called email unless they do something stupid with their data plans. They're fresh out of luck - the world moves on (thankfully).
It's actually quite fun to see major monopolies suddenly lose their ability to gloriously rip people off - especially since they have been behaving like it's an entitlement.
Insert
From: http://www.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=8910
Don't believe the disinformation doublespeak about why Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned from the Apple Board of Directors this morning. For the story the Applo-Googlo-controlled media doesn't want you to hear, check out the following straight-ish dope leaked by our sources on "the inside". (What those sources are inside of, we're not saying.)
1. Too busy now that gmail is out of beta
2. Nervous about the Apple board's new zero-tolerance meth policy
3. Couldn't afford the gas for the Google-to-Apple monthly commutes
4. Just about to crush Apple with gTunes. Oops, did we just leak that?
5. Preparing to run for governor of Alaska
6. Can no longer deny that the Zune is the future
7. Just felt that they'd grown apart: "It's not Apple, it's me"
8. Tired of lecturing Millard Drexler about his foot-odor problem
9. Somebody keeps eating his pudding out of the break-room fridge
10. Offended about the tetherball court being removed at AT&T's request
11. Confused about how outsourcing works, he's going to serve on the board of some company in India
12. Won't have time now that he's playing bass for Nickelback
13. Upset that Steve Jobs refuses to release his real birth certificate
14. Now he can get that Palm Pre he's been eyeing
15. Never really forgave the Klingons for the death of his boy
16. Board meetings interfered with his plans to camp out for opening night of The Twilight Saga: New Moon
17. Decided to dedicate his life to finally finding a cure for fan death
18. Could no longer stand the anxiety of hiding his forbidden love for Steve Wozniak
19. Was only ever in it for the advance copy of Snow Leopard anyway
20. Couldn't resolve the conflict over which company was going to buy Woot
"Schmidt Happens"
C|N>K
It's been interesting watching Apple and Google get more negative comments on Slashdot over the last few months (or the last couple of years in Apple's case).
I think the criticism of Apple is partly because of their inherent need to have control, which clashes with a community of geeks who love to hack at things, find non-obvious/non-intended uses for them, and just generally gain more knowledge. That then boils over when, like you said, some Apple fans are so quick to jump on any criticism at all (see: Reality Distortion Field).
Google, on the other hand, has a lot to do with privacy and their enormous databases. I also think that after seeing what happens when one company becomes too big/has too much control (Microsoft), the slashdot crowd is being a lot more vigilant to possible abuses. It seems too many people are quick to implicitly trust and not question anything for no other reason than "It's from Google", which can easily lead to bad things when left unchecked, as it did with Microsoft.
This story is all over the net, and seems to me pretty odd that this is so newsworthy. Boards are stuffed with CEOs, hence varying degree of conflicts of interests, direct and indirect, and I would have thought such shuffling should be routine, not so newsworthy. The fact that it is not routine perhaps is a symptom of lousy corporate governance that underhandedly enshrines old-boys club.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Wiring Diagrams! I want to hear some Microsoft FUD! Maybe add in that Ballmer made a statement about Shmidt saying that he would, "...totally be able to outdistant Shmidt in a shot put competition".
Common Sense
Hardly surprising, given all the free advertising they get from the media. The sad thing is that the Apple hype will eventually lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, leaving us with an Apple monopoly far worse than Microsoft: expensive products with yesterday's features touted as "new", and a completely locked down platform. Nice one, media!
There are in fact other companies who are doing well - e.g., RIM, but most of the media prefers to ignore them. You'd think that a place like "news for nerds" would "think different" and focus on the interesting developments in the phone market, but instead it's just the same "Iphone news" that the mainstream media reports.
Because compared to Google Earth, Virtual Earth is terrible. That being said, Virtual earth is not that bad it's just nowhere near as good as Google Earth. Also MS wont likely have a bar of it, ActiveSync licensing is used to further Exchange sales, what back end product does a Virtual Earth license serve.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Potty mouth!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Its nice to see someone taking their responsibility of their job so seriously, I know many who even if they were
in conflict with another contract or job, they would still go through with it, just because they would have to get caught and prosecuted...and this guy is not even really that up in arms about missing meetings...I guess you can say he has some dignity!
I don't see how there can be a conflict of interest here - Apple is a hardware company, not a software company.