Jun 1, 2011 08:10 GMT  ·  By

Google Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt talked during the first day of the D9 All Things D conference, in an interview, and tackled several issues related to Google, its competitors, Facebook, Apple and the internet as a whole.

One of the first things that came up is what he calls the "Gang of Four," the four web companies that are driving huge growth even as they scale bigger and bigger.

Google, obviously is on the list, with the other three being Apple, Amazon and Facebook.

Schmidt believes that each company is the best at what it does, Google for information, Apple for great products, Amazon for shopping and Facebook for identity, and that, as platforms, they have driven the internet forward.

Notably absent from the list is Microsoft, which Schmidt believes is not doing anything interesting on the consumer level and that will be driven by the enterprise market for the foreseeable future.

Given that there are four big web companies now, Google has to both compete and work with all of them, which creates quite a lot of tension. Despite the seemingly growing gap between Apple and Google, Schmidt says that the two companies are still working together, for example, both the search and the maps deal for iOS have been renewed.

The situation is different with Facebook, Schmidt said that he tried to get a search deal done a few years ago and forge a tighter relationship with Google. But if there's one thing that Facebook wants, it's to beat Google.

He does believe that identity and social is a great asset and he faulted himself for Google failing to act when it needed. He says that he was thinking about identity four years ago, but in the end didn't do anything about it. Asked why, he said it was probably because he was so busy.