Brandishing iPhone, Google CEO says expect more Apple+Google collaboration to come

“Apple’s much-vaunted iPhone received a ringing endorsement from the chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, on Tuesday, after he claimed that the handset was a perfect platform for the search specialist’s hosted applications,” Andrew Donoghue reports for ZDNet UK.

“Speaking at an event in Paris on Tuesday, Schmidt was questioned on whether, as Google’s boss and an Apple board member, he had any insights into future collaboration between the two companies. ‘What you are really asking is to see my iPhone,’ he quipped before producing a handset from his pocket. ‘iPhone is a powerful new device and is going to be particularly good for the apps that Google is building. You should expect other announcements from the two companies over time,’ he said,” Donoghue reports.

“The iPhone, which will be launched in the US on 29 June, but which will not be available in the UK until later this year, fully incorporates Google’s search and mapping services. Users can make phone calls directly from Google Maps,” Donoghue reports. “Key to Google’s belief in the potential of the iPhone is Apple’s decision to integrate support for the Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web-development technique.”

Full article here.


  1. Actually, if you review my interview at Allthingsdigltal5 (the one with Gates) you will hear me talk about what I admired about Microsoft. And that was their ability to partener with other companies being in their DNA.

    Guess what. It was me talking about what I had learned to do! Notice how I said that we probably would have been better off if we had learned that early on?


  2. @ nym Steve Jobs

    You mean you couldn’t see the <sarcasm> tag from your position?

    Microsoft, most sued company ever, lost more lawsuits than any other company, paid out well over $10Bn to ‘partners’ in compensation, and that’s what is publicly available, most cases are settled with no details announced.

  3. Don’t forget services! SERVICES!!! It’s a cast of countless wonderful services that will keep people on Verizon.
    2 dollar ringtones!!!
    8 color games!!!
    What do people want? They want services. We even told them.

  4. Business is just like playing “Risk”. You develop alliances, but always understand in the back of your mind that things may change. There are no loyalties. There can’t be. Google may be just fine, and tomorrow build a web browser to compete with Safari. There’s just no telling.

  5. Andrew:“Google may be just fine, and tomorrow build a web browser to compete with Safari. There’s just no telling.”

    And Apple would be fine with that, particularly if it worked well with open standards. One of the main reasons Apple created Safari was to ensure the existence of a top class open standards compliant browser for the Macs that they sell and make tons of money on.

    Safari in and of itself is not a great money maker for Apple, they make money by having it available on hardware that they sell. If Google made an even better browser that worked on Macs and PCs, Apple would not mind, it might help them sell even more Macs.

    Safari on Windows is all about having Safari as a platform, which works on Macs, PCs, and soon iPhones. Since Apple will sell tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of iPhones, having Safari on Windows is critical to ensuring development of websites works well on their phones.

    Again it’s about using software to sell hardware. Even if Google built a browser that got more marketshare than Safari on Windows, the existence of Safari on Windows would still work just fine to ensure developers could build their sites to work well on iPhones.

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