The sometimes stormy relationship between Apple and Google appears to be growing friendlier, with Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt telling Reuters at the annual Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley that the two companies were having “lots and lots” of meetings.
The two companies started out close. Schmidt joined Apple’s board in 2006, and the iPhone launched with both Googlemaps and YouTube on board. That was to change after Google’s Android platform began growing in popularity. It was revealed in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography that Jobs threatened “thermonuclear war” on Google over what he felt was a copycat product …
The two companies are in “constant business discussions on a long list of issues,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board in 2009, when Google launched its desktop operating system, ChromeOS. As recently as last year, he described the battle between iOS and Android as the “defining fight of the industry today.” Apple replaced Googlemaps with such haste that Tim Cook was forced to issue an apology, and the YouTube app – now owned by Google – went too.
Neither party is saying anything about the content of the meetings, and a report from the same conference by Bloomberg doesn’t necessarily suggest the closest of relationships:
Bloomberg reports that Schmidt said he has “a lot of respect for Apple.”
“We got Tim to smile,” Schmidt said. “Always a good thing.”
Competition between the two is, however, likely to be increased by Google’s reputed plans to spend half a billion dollars promoting its Motorola Mobility subsidiary’s Moto X handset due for launch later this year.
