Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced today at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco that Google and Apple, Inc. plan to strengthen it’s ties to help take on Microsoft and products like Microsoft Office.

Schmidt, who is not only Google’s CEO, but also a member of Apple, Inc.’s board of directors has also recently appeared on stage with Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs last month at MacWorld where they unveiled the much anticipated Apple iPhone Widescreen which included Google Search and also Google Maps.

The recent announcement comes shortly after rumors surfaced that Google is looking to develop a handheld device that could compete with Apple’s iPhone, but that was quickly put to rest today when Eric Schmidt said, “I will tell you that Google and Apple are doing more and more things together through the normal course of communications … We have similar goals and similar competitors.”

These similar competitors Eric speaks of although not directly stated are widely accepted to be Microsoft and at least immediately Microsoft Office.

Last month Google launched a package of business software services that includes a word processor, spreadsheet and an e-mail account. Companies that sign up for the service will pay Google $50 a year per user for a guaranteed level of service.

The Google Apps product is regarded by tech analysts as a serious challenge to Microsoft’s dominant Microsoft Office software.

This interesting partnership seems to make quite a bit of sense though. Google and Apple are both considered highly innovative companies with a certain coolness to them and both have dominated certain aspects of the tech industry with Google obviously dominating the search market and now online video market with GooTube while Apple has been dominating the online music and portable music market for years.

While both companies stock benefitted today from this news it’s not completely clear what other ventures both Apple and Google will be working together on.

Some industry analysts and rumor websites have reported that Apple will be unveiling a completely new “tablet” like computer that will be revolutionary as it will not have any buttons and will instead use Apple’s new patented multi-touch screen similar to what’s being used on the new iPhone.

This again makes so much sense… Look at your keyboard right now. How many buttons do you actually use? How about those F1 - F12 buttons? This approach allows the software makers to produce user interfaces specifically for those applications. What’s the point of having all those plastic buttons just sit there if you’re not hardly going to use them? This approach also allows you to simply use your finger to say “drag and drop” a picture into your email or search through files by simply using your finger.

Another side of this possible product is that most tech industry experts believe that more and more applications will be moving over to the internet and away from those prehistoric cardboard boxes with cd’s with bits on them like we’ve been buying at Best Buy and Comp USA for years.

Apple and Google’s approach might be new to most, but this is surely the way of the future in personal computing. Why go to the store to buy these products when we can simply use them for a small fee from companies like Google? It’s simply hosted on their data centers and in theory just makes our computers more of a “user interface” rather than a storage device.

While this product may still be in development, it shows both companies drive to leapfrog past Microsoft by simply creating sleek, efficient, powerful and easy to use mobile products that continue to simplify our lives.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.