Goople: Apple and Google link
If you’ve followed technology trends in the last year, it’s easy to see how Google has been trying to break into a few different industries.
With the launch of the Android phone, Google threw itself into battle with the iPhone, a fight the entire smart phone industry has been waging since Apple first went mobile. Then the release of Google Chrome thrust Google into the war for Internet browsers with Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Next is the pending release of Chrome OS, by which Google intends to contend with Microsoft and Apple for market share in operating systems, taking on Windows and OS X. Apple has even gone so far as to deny Google Voice from being used on the App store for the iPhone, leading all to believe the competition between Google and Apple is amping up.
Sounds like good corporate competitive spirit from different companies vying for market dominance. Ironically, the companies aren’t that different.
Apple and Google share the same brain.
Goople, as I’ve termed it, is the collective brain trust that has run Apple and Google for most of the last decade.
Al Gore has been a director of Apple since 2003, and also performs similar duties with Google. Gore was also instrumental in Steve Jobs’s defense a few years back about stock options. Several other directors for both Apple and Google have worked together and for both technological giants at the same time, essentially competing against themselves.
Neither company has suffered due to this unusual Goople system, but the FTC has taken notice and launched an investigation into both, which has forced the resignation of one person already.
Whether or not the FTC will find any foul play involved is unknown, but it does show that the methods people employed during the tech bubble burst are still working. Someone starts off and improves an existing model, picks up a few people that can contribute, and they move from place to place, bringing expertise and efficiency along the way.
In my opinion, the system hasn’t hurt anyone, and if anything, it has improved the quality of product (and variety) that consumers can access. If Goople can do it better than two separate companies, then individual corporate greed has taken a step toward technological evolution.
Rob @ August 4, 2009