Eric Schmidt says Apple and Google working together on new projects, don't read too much into it

Man, this one is feeding right into some fanboy's sick fantasy: when asked at a conference on Monday about a potential Google + Apple tablet device, Google CEO Eric Schmidt did confirm that the two companies are working together on "many more" new projects and left it at that. It's tempting to want to read a lot into that, too bad that "working together" doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot. Especially since "working together" could mean anything from the Google Maps app that comes pre-installed on the iPhone (which also happens to be already available for lots of other phones as well) to more deeply integrating Google into Safari, with some sort of hardware device being a longshot. Besides, isn't Google working on a phone of its own?

[Thanks, Will Arnold]

[Curtis @ Mar 6th 2007 2:20AM]

Great, more Apple in our lives. Google should pour money into working w/ *nix systems, rather than working with Steve Jobs. Just what I want to see more unispired names (i.e. iGoogle).

[Kevlar @ Mar 6th 2007 3:19AM]

uh.. Apple's OS X is basically a *nix OS anyways... anything that runs there SHOULD be mostly trivial to port.

[rav0 @ Mar 6th 2007 3:52AM]

It's not "trivial" to port from OSX, even though it does share roots with Unix systems.

[Rob @ Mar 6th 2007 9:07AM]

I have the Google Maps application for my Treo 700p and it is friggin' awesome. Highly recommended... BTW, the 700p was just about as costly as the iPhone.

[Bilbo Baggins @ Mar 6th 2007 9:31AM]

I've got the Google Maps app for my BlackBerry and while it's very cool and useful, it's not nearly as integrated with my device as the one you'll see on iPhone is. The maps app on iPhone will be a unique Apple-Google collaboration as will any other future apps that appear on iPhone. It's definitely not the same app that's currently available for download.

[Iceman @ Mar 6th 2007 11:39AM]

I think engadget should launch an "engadget immobile" website for people like kev that don't want to read about gadgets that you can take with you.

[steve @ Mar 6th 2007 12:20PM]

not a grammar nazi, seriously, but just in the first sentence, there's a double "is" and a double "about".... honestly, i feel like such a prick, but lately it's almost getting to distraction level

[Ryudo @ Mar 6th 2007 2:07PM]

Who needs to googlemap Starbucks..just look across the street and when you cross the street look across again as you see another.

[BatteryAcid @ Mar 6th 2007 10:58PM]

According to that imap your right.

[Paul Randall @ May 12th 2007 7:30AM]

Curtis:
Oh Contraire..

Googe already does put more money into working with *nix systems than it does with Apple but really they should put more money and time into working with Apple than *nix systems. Like getting the whole of Googlemail's features to work with Safari for example. And if the missing items are due to how Safari works then Schmdt should offer to help in the Webcore codebase to get these components to work. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google is on the Apple board and has been for a while now so supposedly it's his duty to support the platform manufacturer that he is a director of more than their competitors isn't it? Or he shouldn't be on the board at all.

He can't just be on there to piss off Gates and Ballmer surely.