14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has just announced that Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, is resigning from Apple’s Board of Directors. Schmidt has acted as a member on Apple’s board since 2006, Apple reveals in a report.
“Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, said. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”
In his statement, Apple’s CEO revealed what pretty much every tech-focused analyst had predicted – that Google’s newly announced OS would pose a threat to Apple. Last month, Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said, “I think this is a threat,” referring to Google’s initiative of rolling out an Internet-aimed OS.
Ezra is just one of the several researchers who think that Apple should be concerned about Google’s move. “This exposes the consequences of letting a gigantic gap open between its lowest-priced notebook and cheap netbooks,” he added, according to a Computerworld report. Gottheil also predicted that Apple was gearing up for the release of a new device that would combine particularities from the iPod touch, and the company’s MacBooks.
As described by its makers, Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks, leaving little room for speculation on the Mac front. Later this year, the search engine giant would open-source its code, while netbooks running the new software would be available for consumers in the second half of 2010, the company confirmed last month.