They said it could never last, and sure enough, after a tumultuous three year relationship plagued by anti-trust legislators, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has parted company with Apple. The growing conflicts in interests between the two technology titans made Schmidt’s position on the Apple look increasingly untenable, and so it has proven with the announcement that he will be stepping down on their board.
It’s not hard to see why so many viewed Schmidt’s alignment with Apple as potentially anti-competitive. With Google already dominating the search market and diversifying elsewhere, Apple have rebuilt a technology empire around the Mac, iPod (including iTunes) and iPhone. With the release of the Android phone operating system, Google found themselves in direct competition with Apple; something which would not have been openly welcomed by Steve Jobs et al.
