Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Apple CEO Steve Jobs were spotted having coffee together in public March 26. Some high-tech watchers see this as a neutral-ground meeting designed to make the press think the companies' animosity toward each other has cooled. Will the companies continue to work together, particularly with Apple's much-ballyhooed iPad set to make its debut April 3? Here is a humorous look at what the two company leaders could have discussed over coffee.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Apple CEO
Steve Jobs were
spotted having coffee together in public at a shopping center in Palo
Alto, Calif., March 26.
Some high-tech watchers saw this as a neutral-ground meeting designed to
make the press think the companies' animosity toward each other has cooled.
Others wonder if some sort of genuine d??«tente is afoot.
Will the companies continue to work together, particularly with Apple's
much-ballyhooed
iPad set to debut April 3?
Or did the leaders of two of the most powerful high-tech companies ever have
other things to chat about? eWEEK doesn't know, but we took light-hearted
guesses.
Fair warning: These exchanges are completely fictional. This is a little
pre-April Fool's Day humor intended to make light of the
psychoanalysis
surrounding this not-so-surreptitious meeting of two brilliant minds.
1) Android versus iPhone
The rub of the contentious relationship between Google and Apple is the
emergence of Google Android-based smartphones as a threat to Apple's iPhone.
Jobs reportedly
scoffed at Google's Don't Be Evil motto and said Google wants to
kill the iPhone.
Maybe he wanted to clear the air with Schmidt over this. Jobs: "I
didn't mean it. I mean, I did, but I didn't mean for it to come out like that
... Does Google really want to kill the iPhone?"
2) Schmidt says ...
"Hell, no, Steve! You make the most popular smartphone on the planet
and we make lots of cash from search ads served to users on those great
gadgets. Why would we want to kill the iPhone?"
3) Or ...
Jobs: "Well, Eric, this is the thing. We're switching to Bing." As
in, Jobs wanted to inform Schmidt that Apple was indeed
replacing Google with Microsoft Bing as the iPhone's default
search engine.
This might explain Schmidt's slumped appearance, which body language experts
speculated
was an exhibition of submission. We don't believe that psychobabble crap
either, but, hey, people need something cool to talk about.
4) What Apple will sue Google for
Google's
Nexus One is so much like the iPhone, from multitouch to
other features, that Jobs and his legal eagles felt compelled to
sue HTC, which manufactures the device.
Perhaps Jobs wanted to discuss his intentions toward Google in this regard:
"Eric, the only reason we didn't sue Google over the Nexus One is because
you didn't make the phone. But here's what we will sue you all for ..."
You fill in the blank. Google doesn't "make" the phones.
Android is open source. What grounds would Apple have to sue
Google?
5) AdMob-Quattro thang
Perhaps Schmidt was expressing remorse for the way Google shrewdly
outbid Apple for AdMob, a deal that is
in doubt.
Schmidt: "Sorry about that AdMob thing. If we had known the FTC was
going to give us this much grief over it, we would never have bid on it."
Jobs: "That's okay. We've
got Quattro Wireless. It's no AdMob, but if you can't get
that company, we'll pick it up, too."
Schmidt: "But you've got Quattro!"
Jobs: "One can never have enough mobile ad market share."
Schmidt fumes. Wasn't that his line?
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