The rivalry between Apple and Google was heating up

Oct 17, 2014 12:35 GMT  ·  By

Now that Apple’s big announcements for the year are out of the way, Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman finally explains why he decided to leave the Apple board, defending the move and saying it was for the right reasons.

While Apple didn’t mind his presence on the board because they see no conflict between Chrome and Safari, their respective web browsers, it seems they really did mind the rivalry between iPhone and Android phones.

Eric Schmidt is Google’s executive chairman and has previously occupied the CEO job between 2001 and 2011. For three years, between 2006 and 2009, he was a director on the board of Apple who was still run by Steve Jobs at the time.

While things between Schmidt and the rest of the directors was OK for a while, it seems like things turned sour pretty quickly. The iPhone and iPads were in direct competition with Google’s Android mobile operating system that was quickly reaching more and more devices, CNET reports.

iOS vs. Android

As soon as the two started competing more and more on the same markets, the relationship soured and Jobs declared “thermonuclear war” on Google because he felt as if Android was stealing iOS concepts.

“Steve [Jobs] and I talked about two things that overlapped. One was what became Chrome, and one was what became Android,” Schmidt recalled during a conference in London. He added that Apple did not mind the battle between Chrome and Safari, “but they really did mind the iOS vs Android issues.”

Of course, this makes sense since Safari isn’t exactly the bread-winner in the company, just like Chrome isn’t for Google. Android and iOS, on the other hand, bring in a huge chunk of both companies’ revenues even if not directly (for Google, at least).

Schmidt explains that his best move was to step out of the room when the subject of iPhones came up in board meetings. When talking things over with Jobs, however, the two tech leaders decided that things just didn’t feel right.

That’s when Schmidt decided to step down from Apple’s board for good. The Google exec says that he feels like he resigned for the right reasons given the situation between the two companies.

After all, while he served on Apple’s board between 2006 and 2009, the iPhone first appeared in June 2007, with Android coming on its tail just a few months later.