Holy smoke this one got under my radar. As of august 29, 2006 Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, was elected to Apple’s board of directors. This is hugh. Not only does two of the largest, and at this time must cutting edge companies mix blood - in itself rather signifcant. And it is rare that two possible contennders are greating each other, simply because they adore each other.

But more importantly, at least symbolically, the two companies joins forces to battle Microsoft, no doubt. Apple has no specific strategic gain in this, as much as they like to see their own product taking bite after bite of the pc market. They still has a pretty good alliance with the Microsoft, especially with the iPod and iTunes as a Trojan Horse.
Google however has been trying to position themself hard against Microsoft’s online dominance, for instance trying to lure of users of from the MSN platform - by simply offering more for less, gmail, chat, calender, video, maps etc. to name a few examples.

Google has been launching one online app after the other “as proofs of concept”, trying to show that they could perhaps make a plausable contender to the holy Office package - for free. Calling Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to go megahard, pointing at the searchengine from Mountian View the no. 1. enemy of the Microsoft company, personated in Eric Schmidt, who Ballmer outbattered when he was cheif of technology at Sun.

Ballmer then pejoratively berated Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lucovsky recalled.
“I’m going to f—ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again,” the declaration quotes Ballmer. “I’m going to f—ing kill Google.”

While there is not yet any formal aggrement on specific outcome of the Google and Apple top merge. It seems likely Eric is teaming up to battle with side by side with the other cool guys in the yard (that’s Steve Jobs). But still the puzzle remainsm, what could be the outcome of this? How significant will it be. Perhaps one scenario is a Google driven office package (developed on top of google spreadsheets and wordprocesser) native on Apple computers? To strees Microsoft away from their dominant position sustained by the Office package? don’t know - however the battle has begun.