Eric Schmidt: Apple & Google Relationship ‘Stable’

Although Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) is rumored to have stated that he “hates” Google’s Eric Schmidt, the latter seems to either know a different story, refuse to believe these claims, or simply be unaware of these events.

Jim Goldman, CNBC Silicon Valley Bureau chief, wrote this week that he had received an “intriguing” email from a “knowledgeable source very familiar with search dynamics involving Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo,” in which this source reportedly said, “Jobs hates Eric.”

With that out of the way, Google CEO Eric Schimdt reportedly told an analyst during his company’s financial call last night that, “As a former board member, I have a special spot for Apple in my heart. I will tell you that Apple is a very well-run company and they have a lot of very good stuff coming [...] We have a couple of very good partnerships with them and we also compete with them in a couple [of] areas. My guess is that's (going to be) a pretty stable situation for a while,” according to 9to5Mac.

Apple has been rumored not once, but many times recently that talks between the company and Microsoft have been intense in regards to a Bing deal, thanks to which Apple would get more cents per click for search results via its Safari web browser. It’s likely, and it only adds to the intensification of competition between the two former friends – Apple and Google.

As many of you also know, the duo now compete in the smartphone segment, and viciously may we add. The iPhone OS and Android operating system each claim a piece of the smartphone pie. Google also has the Chrome web browser, which, although not very popular, could steer some users clear from Safari, as well as an upcoming operating system, which, one way or another, will have to gain popularity from computer users currently employing Windows, Linux, and Apple’s Mac OS X.