“Earlier this week, fellow Fool Rick Munarriz wrote about Google CEO Eric Schmidt accepting a seat on Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) board. Rick suggested that Schmidt’s move was about making life miserable for Microsoft. I’ve got a different idea,” Jack Uldrich writes for The Motley Fool.
“In the short term, I think it’s more about Apple landing a spot for its iTunes digital media service on Google’s toolbar, and Google finding new ways to leverage its advertising network. In the longer term, though the picture begins to get cloudy, I have a sneaking suspicion that video content will play an increasing role in the two companies’ future relationship,” Uldrich writes. “Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I see a link here, in the person of former Vice President Al Gore.”
“A board member at Apple and “special advisor” to Google, Gore recently turned Hollywood star with a leading role in the global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth. In addition to his political and environment interests, Gore is also the founder and owner of Current TV, a current-affairs TV channel that shows user-generated programs,” Uldrich writes. “I find Gore’s roles at Apple, Google, and Current TV particularly interesting.”
Uldrich writes, “It could be true that Google, Apple, and Current TV won’t do anything together to rival television — but color me skeptical. For one thing, Gore was also at the Edinburgh event, where he said that he hopes his new channel will reach 50 million people by 2010. A little help from Google and Apple could only help to meet such an ambitious goal… If Google does have plans to eventually rival TV, I’d simply encourage the company to be more candid about them. But then again, showing its hand so early might be just the sort of strategy that Al Gore would advise Google against.”
Full article here.
You know, because “Current TV” is soooo very successful and Al Gore’s strategic advice is soooo tremendously valuable – almost as much as Naomi Wolf’s.
The usual late-August Apple news lull seems to have caused a particularly virulent strain of daftness this year.
We think Apple put Google’s CEO on the board because Steve thought it made the boardroom table visually balanced from his perspective: four per side. Having four guys sitting on one side and just three on the other was driving him absolutely crazy! It’s really that simple.
Plus, as anybody knows, 8 is better than 7: the 8 spokes of the Dharmachakra, the 8 dynamics of life, tarot card No. 8 means “strength,” turn an 8 sideways and you have ∞, Carl Yastrzemski’s retired number, 8 maids a-milking, etc.
Related articles:
Google CEO on Apple’s board opens up many possibilities, including outdueling Microsoft – August 31, 2006
Re: Google CEO elected to Apple Computer’s Board of Directors – August 30, 2006
Dvorak: Does Apple’s board addtion of Google’s Schmidt portend Apple-Sun merger? – August 30, 2006
Apple and Google cozy up to make Microsoft jealous – August 30, 2006
Google CEO to help shape Apple’s future – August 30, 2006
Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt joins Apple’s Board of Directors – August 29, 2006
More speculation, just like idiots who thought Steve Jobs was going to run for President of the US because Al Gore joined Apple’s board of directors.
Steve Jobs is making sure what happened with the board the last time he was in charge of Apple won’t happen again.
I don’t blame him, FSCKING JOHN SCULLY ASSHOLE.
i like macs.
mw, believe it or not, is hell, as in WHY THE HELL IS IT THAT I COME TO THIS “MAC NEWS SITE” AND IT ALMOST ALWAYS TURNS INTO A POLITICAL BOXING RING??
To all liberals, all your presidential offices are belong to us. (Insert maniacal laughter here with video scenes of Diebold voting machines being delivered to California, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts,….)
Who would you rather have on your Board of Directors – Al Gore or the CEO of Google?
´nuff said.
Or you all think Al Gore is worth as much as the Google head honcho?
Matt,
I think it’s because it’s coming up to the mid-terms.
The same thing happened on the run-up to November 2004. Several hundred lunatics turned up pretending to know what the hell they were talking about.
Fanatic Realist “The same thing happened on the run-up to November 2004. Several hundred lunatics turned up pretending to know what the hell they were talking about.”
LOL like you do???
Current TV rules! They were doing user-generated video long before it was popularized by YouTube and Google Video.
(I love the show Google Current.)
Mixing it up with Apple can’t be that bad.
IMO, the internet was easily worth the 9/11 tragedy
Don’t get too excited about the veracity of Gore’s information in “An Inconvenient Truth”. Here’s what Al told Grist Magazine about global warming, when asked about the film’s doomsday scenarios:
“I believe it is appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
Science steps aside for politics…
mudflapper:
You betray your bigotry and your stupidity by making the foolish, biased, unsubstantiated, and irresponsible accusation that “the religious right” is inclusively culpable for spreading lies. I thought that you left-wingers were above promoting self-righteous generalizations and sanctimonious stereotypes. Tsk, tsk, pointing out the mite…. (you know the rest).
Liberal = cry baby, liar, tax you to death, celebrity suck up, liar, dishonest, liar, loser!
I can use a computer to call people names! Thanks for my new computer! I’m important now! I can tell people my opinion and they will read it out of sheer curiosity!
Mega dittos ditto-heads! Ya take that! Stick it! Yeah! I’m cool! I’m 4 years old!
This is really sad. MDN sux.
There’s something almost orgasmic in reading about conservative macheads. As a liberal I have seen the pattern that conservatives don’t have a creative bone in their bodies. They only know how to destroy, take down, curse or ridicule, people, places or things. So it’s with twisted satisfaction that I watch them and ooooh and aaaah over macs, a computer that was created in a liberal village with liberals, and the in the minds of great liberals. Aaah the pleasure.
Oh, thanks a lot for starting this MDN!
And speaking of being pissed, where the hell are my two free iPod Nanos that were promised to me on an ad on your site? You know, the one that speaks right up and says you are one of the specially chosen to receive two Nanos if you just go through this questionnaire?
Of course I should have known – but it was on MDN, after all….
No Nano’s, natch!
HmmmmmHmmmmm
What is so creative about what you just posted? Being a liberal does not make you creative. Being a conservative does not make you a bore. I completely agree with you about liberals being more creative on the whole, but not exclusively. I could also accuse y’all of creating false realities, but that is not the purpose of this response.
Libs and conservatives have a completely different outlook on life. That doesn’t make them mutually exclusive. What good is being creative when the money to finance that ability may well come from the “uncreative” portion of our society? Is it that hard for liberals to appreciate the value of anything conservatives do? I have been a musician most of my 44 years. I enjoy everything from Merle Haggard to Joni Mitchel. Allmans to Weather Report. Bach to Wagner. Miles Davis to Dwight Yoakam.
Al Green to White Stripes. I take a pass on most rap and opera. My point is this, I hear too much bigotry and smugness in your comment. Try humor next time.
OK, I’ve had enough. ALL of you, liberals and conservatives alike… bend over right now.
Lookin for those Nanos.
Heated political discussion is one thing, but this demonizing of people who dissagree with you is one of the most disturbing developments in this country of the last twenty years.
Politics is not like football. Your team is not always right (which ever side that is) and trying to burn your opponent to the ground leaves no room for discussion.
This is NOT the way politics has been run in this country when it is successful.
Oh yeah and this is a Mac new site and I’m a conservative when it comes to pull down menus & quite liberal when it comes to RAM.
TowerTone
I am completely where you are on the music and the politics. I am the same way. And actually I was wrong in using the term “conservative”. There are great conservatives out there and alot who disagree with this murderous bloated administration. The word I should have actually used is “wingnut”. As for the bigotry and the smugness you thought you heard….it was deliberately injected, not because I believe it…I was just baiting them….as they do the liberals. Why you might ask? Because, it’s fun.
Have to commend you on your music taste. It’s weird how close our taste run. Lately I’ve been overcoming my aversion to opera (Bocelli is great). A couple of raps on my ipod too. Today’s music SUCK. Really SUCK!! The range of music on my ipod would make you laugh. From A-Z in genres, I probably have at least one song.
Well hope my comment set you straight. There are people dying everyday and these wingers still stand behind this racist, unjust, murderous administration and cheer on as children are raped and murdered, soilders loose their arms and legs and lives, we the tax payers are robbed blind by Halliburton and Blackwater. The least I can do is needle them wherever I find them. Next time please don’t interrupt my fun. Please.
“This is NOT the way politics has been run in this country when it is successful. ”
Fortunately that is not true at all. In fact, it is much better today than at many times in our country’s history. Nowadays, people hold signs across the street from each other and sling names on the internet. In the past when people disagreed politically (or otherwise) we had things like the Civil War, The shooting of Alexander Hamilton, The death of Abraham Lincoln, The killing of Joseph Smith, the shooting of Kennedy, and the attempted impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
The beauty of America is that when people argue, tanks don’t start rolling in the streets. If the controversy over the 2000 election happened almost anywhere else in the world, there would have been deaths involved.
Oh yeah, and what do you mean by “when it (the country) is successful”. O think we are pretty darn successful, and have been since the seventies.
Ray Lane,
Hey! I killed JFK. Credit where credit’s due, you Capitalist American Pig!
(BTW: Algore is an idiot. Sorry, comrades.)
There are people dying everyday and these wingers still stand behind this racist, unjust, murderous administration and cheer on as children are raped and murdered, soilders loose their arms and legs and lives, we the tax payers are robbed blind by Halliburton and Blackwater.
No offense, but you really need to learn the facts.
First of all, I do not understand how this administration is “racist, unjust and murderous”. I understand that people die in wars, and that ward SUCK. However, the murderers and racists are the people that decide to fly planes into buildings, strap bombs to children, and declare that the zionists and infidels must be destroyed for no other reason than that they exist.
Also I don’t think I have ever met a single person that “cheers on as children are raped and murdered”. However, I do know that Saddam Hussein paid people to rape woman as a torture method, and killed many of his countries children, and he is no longer in business. I do cheer that.
You are correct that soldiers do lose arms and lives. But what you neglect is that they volunteered to fight, knowing full well the possible consequences. They did this so that the fights would not be here on our streets, or on our planes. They did it so that you would continue to have the freedom to spew misinformed nonsense.
As for Halliburton, can you name another company that has the man power, facilities and equipment to do the job of rebuilding? I don’t think you can. I don’t understand why it is that left-wingnuts constantly bash companies for sending jobs overseas, but then bash companies that hire thousands of Americans.
“Hey! I killed JFK. Credit where credit’s due, you Capitalist American Pig!”
Heym maybe you really are still alive. I thought your brother was just playing “weekend at Bernie’s” with you.
MDN Word: Beyond, as in “I just got a response from Fidel….from beyond the grave.
Anyone that says Al Gore is a moron must have scored lower on their SAT’s than Bush. You can call Gore many things and maintain some sense of intelligence, but to call him a moron is only showing the world how truly ignorant you really are.
Oh and by the way I scored better on my SATs than our current president, which I think is rather sad.
MDN started all this with their inflammatory ‘take’, cool it fellas, it was a cheap shot.
Anyone who thinks wars is about protecting you, and not in anyway about obscene profits, be careful, you’re powers of observation aren’t working properly.
GWB & Co. are about wealth concentration a.k.a., ‘trickle down economics’, and They’re having a party, and we aren’t invited. They are doing anything that they think they can get away with in order to concentrate wealth and power. And when I say anything, I mean it, can we get a true investigation, instead of the whitewash known as the “9/11 Omission Report”?
Watch “V for Ventetta” for an entertaining, yet scary, very real potential future. Outside of the glamorized violence, IMHO, it’s a great movie.
Let’s stop dividing ourselves, because its Us vs. the State. Where are the true Conservatives (fiscal sanity, small government) when we need them?
peace, understanding, abundance and health to you all
If you think MDN’s Take was inflammatory, then you need to “lighten up, Francis.”