If you’ve been troubled by the tensions between Google and Apple, afraid that Google might pull a jack move and yank its services from iPhones, worry not. The companies are clearly necessary enough to one another that such extreme measures likely won’t take place for a long time. Eric Schmidt, in a recent interview, said that not only have Apple and Google “extended” their search agreement, but that Google doesn’t consider Apple a competitor.
That’s true enough, really: although Google competes indirectly with Apple through Android, their worries are higher-level than whether their tablets will succeed against the iPad. Practically every device coming onto the market uses Google services, and whenever you’re on the internet, you’re making Google money.
Google’s direct competitor, he said (without irony), is Bing. As silly as it sounds that Google could consider this Johnny-come-lately a competitor, the fact is it’s quite a good search engine and has some actual advantages over Google. Google needs to worry about being feature-inferior, since that would indicate laziness and monopoly.
Unfortunately, Schmidt didn’t drop any chestnuts about changing your name or doing what Google tells you to.