The press release says that it's about the potential conflict of interest. It would have been a concern as soon as Google announced Android, and probably even before.
Quitting the board of a company like apple isnt a decision taken lightly.
As most people and the techcrunch headline pointed out, this has been a long time coming, the google voice situation may have been the tipping point, but this would have happened sooner or later regardless.
Indeed, iPhone v. Android was trouble enough. Add in ChromeOS vs. Mac OS X, and Google Apps v. their Apple counterparts and you begin to wonder just which parts of the board meeting after coffee and bagels that he could actually take part in. I'd imagine that GV was, at best, a side-show to this decision.
Google Voice is irrelevant to this decision. Schmidt has been recusing himself from all things iPhone related since Anroid. Now he has to recuse himself from all things MacOS related. (I doubt the board discusses Safari and iWork, but they overlap as well) I imagine his presence also constrains the board during general topics. Many relevant asides are foreclosed.
I guess he could stay for laptop and desktop hardware strategy and non-product business issues, but he is increasingly unable to apply the special insight that made him valuable as a board member.
I like to refer to things like this as "the brick that broke the camel's back". "Straws" that break the camel's back should be reserved for an insignificant annoyance that sets you off after a long period of building up grievances; calling it the brick implies the long buildup of grievances but also that this one is pretty significant. (And it tends to get a chuckle, which is a plus in my book.) I think this is a pretty significant finger in the eye from Apple.
I hate to reply with fluff, but I'm pretty sure I've actually said that too. Apparently there's a canonical scale of heaviness in our culture.
I definitely have never nuked a poor camel, though (per JacobAldridge's reply), though I'll see what I can do about correcting that oversight. Also perhaps I'll drop a Library of Congress on an unsuspecting camel.
I think there's probably more to the whole Google Voice thing than is, uhh, on the surface. ;-)
I suspect even if Google knew that the application would be rejected that they still would have developed it to start a PR coup to knock the iPhone off of its pedestal. I don't think Google really cares all that much about Google Voice in isolation -- it's of limited strategic value by itself. But if you see it as part of their overall mobile strategy of commoditizing the smart phone market (which Google Voice also helps), and if you look at how important it is for Apple that that not happen, I think the conflict of interest has more teeth.
"who I call" is a massive subset of my social graph.
Most of the things I do are arranged by email/IM. We agree to go to someone's house at a particular time, and then we do so. I'd only call if I managed to get lost.
(The penetration numbers I've heard for gmail mean that college students do not use technology like anyone else. Then again, they're a pretty sweet marketing demographic...)
Yes, but even that subset has tremendous value, if only because you will probably assign different values to different methods of communication.
Communications methods that have a cost associated with them are used for more important stuff than those that are free.
When the telegraph was introduced it certainly wasn't wasted on trivialities, every word cost money.
The phone still costs money, even if the amount per word is so low that in practice it is also used for many trivial communications.
The cost of email and IM is so low that most of it is trivial, spam exists for that one reason only. If an email would cost you 25 cts then spam would be non-existent.
So the graph of who calls who probably has significant value, possibly more than who mails who or who IMs who.
you and i are here on hn. we are the definition of subset. your subset is infinitesimally small in the macro environment of voice conversations. there are billions of people who do not have computers - but do have nokia cell phones. that is the growth market of the next decade.
imho, the us market will lead the way as a test bed for services of this nature to be rolled out globally.
I'm going to say that of my "cohort" in college, email+facebook events were by far the most effective ways to get people to go to a place at a given time.
Further, I would wager my parents' generation do much of this planning via word of mouth at church. This is highly anecdotal though.
(In any case, I think you overstate the set of people without computers but with cell phones from which reasonable social graphs can be generated. Some places cells are rare enough they are shared by a group of people...)
To be honest, A lot of people are blaming Apple for the whole Google Voice thing - I'm pretty sure that Apple were pressured to remove it by AT&T. Skype only got away with being published because it only works for calls over wifi.
As for all the other GV apps, I'm pretty sure they were only removed because AT&T became aware of them as a side effect of the official app being published.
AT&T claims high and low that they were not involved.
Either that's the truth or shredders are running, the FCC has asked that question explicitly and that was AT&Ts answer: "AT&T does not manage or approve applications for the App Store"
Which pretty much leaves Apple to talk their way out of this on their own. Nice to have partners.
Let me ask a simple Qs: Why would AT&T (if it was involved) ask to only remove the GV app on iPhone? Wouldn't Blackberry and Android have lost their GV apps too?
Blackberry and Androind users can still user GV apps, and AT&T has denied any involvement in this fiasco, leads me to believe it was all Apple's doing.
Could be. Possibly there is some real problem with being on the board of directors of a company that is now directly in competition with the company that you are CEO of.
I can't imagine Schmidt was very happy when Apple turned down the google voice application, but at the same time I don't think he was surprised.
Also, this could be the prelude to Google suing Apple over this.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. There's certainly moral problems with being on a competitor's board, but it's definitely advantageous for business purposes for as long as you can get away with it.
I wonder if the GV thing was a result of internal politics with the aim being to force Schmidt to resign. I mean it seemed a bit too heavy handed even for Apple. Either way he had to go.
Hopefully this will mean it's 'game on' for full competition in the mobile space.
A little OT.But I think it is really, really cool that a very technical person is acknowledged to be a capable CEO. Many companies still consider technical people incapable to be leaders (just by definition). Agree some techies may not have the desire or the social skills to lead but not all techies are like that.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadThe press release says that it's about the potential conflict of interest. It would have been a concern as soon as Google announced Android, and probably even before.
As most people and the techcrunch headline pointed out, this has been a long time coming, the google voice situation may have been the tipping point, but this would have happened sooner or later regardless.
In all probability, it's a case of the google voice debacle being the final straw rather than it being the deciding factor.
Having on your board an executive from a company that competes with you in multiple ways is awkward, both for your company and for the executive.
I guess he could stay for laptop and desktop hardware strategy and non-product business issues, but he is increasingly unable to apply the special insight that made him valuable as a board member.
"And destroyed most of his neighborhood."
I definitely have never nuked a poor camel, though (per JacobAldridge's reply), though I'll see what I can do about correcting that oversight. Also perhaps I'll drop a Library of Congress on an unsuspecting camel.
I suspect even if Google knew that the application would be rejected that they still would have developed it to start a PR coup to knock the iPhone off of its pedestal. I don't think Google really cares all that much about Google Voice in isolation -- it's of limited strategic value by itself. But if you see it as part of their overall mobile strategy of commoditizing the smart phone market (which Google Voice also helps), and if you look at how important it is for Apple that that not happen, I think the conflict of interest has more teeth.
Reading HN today has paid off I see. That's a brilliant insight.
Most of the things I do are arranged by email/IM. We agree to go to someone's house at a particular time, and then we do so. I'd only call if I managed to get lost.
(The penetration numbers I've heard for gmail mean that college students do not use technology like anyone else. Then again, they're a pretty sweet marketing demographic...)
Communications methods that have a cost associated with them are used for more important stuff than those that are free.
When the telegraph was introduced it certainly wasn't wasted on trivialities, every word cost money.
The phone still costs money, even if the amount per word is so low that in practice it is also used for many trivial communications.
The cost of email and IM is so low that most of it is trivial, spam exists for that one reason only. If an email would cost you 25 cts then spam would be non-existent.
So the graph of who calls who probably has significant value, possibly more than who mails who or who IMs who.
imho, the us market will lead the way as a test bed for services of this nature to be rolled out globally.
Further, I would wager my parents' generation do much of this planning via word of mouth at church. This is highly anecdotal though.
(In any case, I think you overstate the set of people without computers but with cell phones from which reasonable social graphs can be generated. Some places cells are rare enough they are shared by a group of people...)
Also I was serious.
I never thought of the value that is inherent in knowing who calls who. That's the sort of gem that comes by here every now and then.
as to unique id's...
As for all the other GV apps, I'm pretty sure they were only removed because AT&T became aware of them as a side effect of the official app being published.
Either that's the truth or shredders are running, the FCC has asked that question explicitly and that was AT&Ts answer: "AT&T does not manage or approve applications for the App Store"
Which pretty much leaves Apple to talk their way out of this on their own. Nice to have partners.
Blackberry and Androind users can still user GV apps, and AT&T has denied any involvement in this fiasco, leads me to believe it was all Apple's doing.
I can't imagine Schmidt was very happy when Apple turned down the google voice application, but at the same time I don't think he was surprised.
Also, this could be the prelude to Google suing Apple over this.
Hopefully this will mean it's 'game on' for full competition in the mobile space.
Lyons pandered to the Newsweek demographic which for the most part wouldn't be heavy Internet users.
Newsweek Article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/208163 Reddit discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/942qd/why_old_people_sh... HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=722991
Not intending to cut Lyons at the knees, more hoping to add perspective to his body of work.