Google CEO Won’t Quit Apple Board

The FTC is investigating, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt says he's not about to leave his position on the Apple board.

The Federal Trade Commission is looking at it as a possible breach of antitrust laws, but Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, is adamant that he won’t quit his position on the board of Apple.

Schmidt said:

"If there are issues on competitiveness, I recuse myself."

And those issues are definitely there, given that Google has the Chrome and Android OS, while Apple offers Safari – he also leaves the boardroom when talk turns to the iPhone.

"From my perspective I don’t think Google sees Apple as a primary competitor," he told journalists prior to addressing Google shareholders, according to the BBC. Google’s legal counsel, Kent Walker, noted:

"The law is clear that there is a safe harbor under the Clayton Act for companies that don’t have overlapping revenue in different areas, and we’re comfortable with that position."

At the shareholder meeting, Schmidt said that in spite of the economic downturn, Google is investing in innovation, particularly in search, its core business.

"Information is what we do. Doing it right and doing the world’s perfect search engine remains very, very difficult."