“Jobs. Steve Jobs, CEO of Google!” – Could Have Magically Happened

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So what if Steve Jobs were the CEO of Google? This isn’t the Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone, but an actual possibility. How would have Google looked like had Larry Page and Sergey Brin hired the man that’s mostly responsible for Apple’s current performance?

Would Google have been a better or worse place? Naturally each and every one of us has different opinions on Apple, Google and Steve Jobs and there’s no simple or right answer to that question. According to Bloomberg’s new documentary Steve Jobs was indeed one of the people shortlisted for that Google CEO position which is currently occupied by Eric Schmidt.

According to the “Bloomberg Game Changers” Steve Jobs was considered a personal hero of Page and Brin and one could easily see why Jobs could have been a game changer for Google too. Eric Schmidt was hired instead as Google’s CEO in 2001 and since Steve Jobs was already the CEO of Apple at the time it’s pretty clear why the latter could have never been snatched by Google.

While the media keeps fueling the otherwise very clear conflict between Google and Apple, the relationship between the two companies has been a lot better in the past. In fact Eric Schmidt was one of the members of Apple’s board of directors, and only had to resign when his company started to compete against Apple in various niches where Google was not present before. Naturally I am talking about Chrome OS in the computer business, but most importantly Android OS, which is the only iOS current competitor that can put up a decent fight in the mobile business right now.

It will be interesting how this Google vs Apple conflict will evolve in the following years, and the fight between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, when they’re not meeting for coffee, will still be fun to watch. And it’s Page’s and Brin’s “mistake” that’s responsible for this particular war between corporations, the kind of competition that should be beneficial for consumers. Had they hired Steve Jobs almost 10 years ago then maybe Apple would have never recovered the way it did under Jobs’ management and wouldn’t have inspired Google and spark this unusual rivalry in the mobile and computer business. And we definitely need at least two or three giants to compete in various markets to avoid any company holding a monopoly over our lives; that’s strictly speaking from the tech-point of view.

What do you prefer: “Magical” or “Don’t Be Evil”?