[科技前沿]谷歌CEO从苹果董事会辞职

苹果CEO史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)表示：“施密特是苹果董事会的一名杰出成员，他投入了有价值的时间、才能、热情和智慧以帮助苹果成功。不幸的是，随着谷歌进入苹果的核心业务，例如推出Android和Chrome系统，施密特作为苹果董事会成员的效果已明显下降。由于可能存在利益冲突，施密特将不得不回避我们很大一部分会议。因此我们均认为，现在是施密特辞去苹果董事的恰当时机。 ”

Google Chief Gives Up Board Seat at Apple

SAN FRANCISCO — The alliance between Apple and Google, two Silicon Valley giants with a powerful common enemy in Microsoft, is now clearly fraying.

Apple announced on Monday that Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, was stepping down from its board. The move comes as the Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether the two companies violated antitrust laws by sharing common board members.

The resignation won’t make that investigation disappear. In a statement Monday afternoon, Richard Feinstein, director of the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Competition, commended the companies for acknowledging “that sharing directors raises competitive issues.” But he said the agency would continue to investigate the remaining overlap between the companies’ boards.

Google and Apple still share one board member, Arthur Levinson, the chairman of Genentech.

Mr. Schmidt’s resignation from Apple’s board constitutes a stark admission — Apple and Google had previously played down the issue — that the companies are now directly competing in the crucial race to develop the next generation of software for mobile phones and personal computers.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said in a statement that as Google moved into more of Apple’s businesses, “Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest.”

The news of the F.T.C. investigation in May drew attention to the growing overlap between Apple and Google in areas like mobile phone software, browsers and online video.

Last month, Google announced that it was developing an operating system for computers based on its Chrome browser, which would compete with Microsoft Windows and Apple’s operating system, Mac OS X.

And in recent weeks Apple rejected two of Google’s applications for the iPhone, including one for Google Voice, a service that allows people to make cheap international calls and send free text messages. The software could have hurt the business of Apple’s partner in the United States, ATT, which subsidizes the cost of the iPhone and recoups that money through monthly charges.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission began an inquiry into why Apple had rejected Google Voice, asking in letters to all three companies whether Apple consulted with ATT in making its decision.

When the F.T.C. investigation became known in May, Mr. Schmidt first dismissed suggestions that his role on Apple’s board posed a conflict. Then, at a conference in July, he said he would have to talk to Apple and reassess his role on the board.

In a statement on Monday, Mr. Schmidt said he had enjoyed his time on the Apple board, but that the companies “agreed it makes sense for me to step down now.”

Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, said of the two boards, “These are brilliant people who were smart enough to rationally see what the rest of the world saw a while ago, in terms of the obvious and growing conflicts of interest.”

The F.T.C. is specifically looking into whether Google and Apple violated Section 8 of the Clayton Antitrust Act, which says that companies with common board members must limit the sharing of information through those directors.

According to a person briefed on the investigation, Google is arguing that revenue from products like Chrome, which compete with Apple products, did not constitute more than 2 percent of its sales — one of the standards in the law. That argument is difficult to evaluate because Google gives away software like Chrome to drive more traffic to its money-making search engine.

One possible remedy is for Mr. Levinson to leave one of the two boards. The F.T.C. also might ask the companies to sign a consent decree saying that they will refrain from cooperating or sharing strategies in areas where they overlap.

Gary L. Reback, a lawyer at Carr Ferrell, who in the 1990s helped persuade the Justice Department to pursue its case against Microsoft, said Mr. Schmidt’s departure from Apple’s board suggested Google was taking antitrust questions seriously.

“This is a company with enormous market power, and antitrust enforcers are going to look carefully at everything Google does,” Mr. Reback said. “Google’s first response, which was basically ‘Go fly a kite,’ is not going to work. They are going to have to comply.”

Mr. Schmidt joined Apple’s board in 2006, but his relationship with Apple goes back much further. During Apple’s darkest days in the 1990s, Mr. Schmidt, then chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems, was among the Valley’s most prominent Apple supporters. Sun almost acquired Apple at one point.

More recently, Google has actively developed software for the Macintosh as Apple has come back from near extinction to capture nearly 10 percent of the market for personal computers.

Google programs for the Mac include its search toolbar, Google Earth and the Picasa photo-sharing software, while applications for Google Maps and YouTube are shipped with the iPhone.

When it comes to their common enemy, Microsoft, the companies may have less of a reason to coordinate their strategies nowadays. This year, Microsoft posted its first quarterly year-over-year drop in sales, and it has repeatedly fallen short in trying to extend its dominance of desktop computers to the Web and mobile phones.

Last week, in an effort to catch up to Google in search, Microsoft said it would acquire Yahoo’s search business.

Google and Apple “still have a common enemy, but what’s really more interesting is how the common enemy is doing everything it can to make itself irrelevant,” said Stewart Alsop, a longtime industry watcher.