What have we learned from the appointment of Google CEO Eric Schmidt to Apple Computer's board of directors? "The old social networks in Silicon Valley run very deep," says AnnaLee Saxenian, a Silicon
Valley scholar and dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. "Silicon Valley has a common enemy to the north." Microsoft, beware: the media and technology sectors
are uniting against you with Google at the helm and the Internet as their weapon. Microsoft's Windows could be their next target. Last week, Google announced it was bringing together services that
could be a Web-based competitor to Windows. Apple, meanwhile, recently drove a massive wedge between Microsoft and Intel--one of the most dominant partnerships in computing history--when it announced
an alliance with the chip-maker. After Schmidt's appointment to Apple's board, all the chatter is about the next steps these companies will take together. Will Apple use Google's search engine on
iTunes? Will Apple promote Google's new Web-based operating system on its computers? What about Apple's ties to Pixar and Disney? Steve Jobs is CEO of both Apple and Pixar--and now that he's on
Disney's board, following its $7.4 billion acquisition of Pixar, Jobs could be positioning Apple to play an even more influential role in the convergence of media and technology. "What Disney was for
Pixar, Google could be for Apple," Tony Perkins, editor of AlwaysOn, a Web site for Silicon Valley insiders, told
The New York Times.
Read the whole story at The New York Times »
