Google CEO on Apple's Board Means...What?

Apple announced today that Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was joining the board of directors. GigaOM suggests that the move is something of an informal alliance between the two companies, which could spell headaches for Microsoft. One interesting observation is the idea that Google is getting close to releasing a suite of office tools online, including the already-beta Google Spreadsheets and the upcoming Writely transition from a standalone tool to part of the Google suite. Apple is anything if not interested in something that can keep the Microsoft Office albatross from around it's neck, and the death of its own AppleWorks suite a while back suggests that a lower-end office solution might be something it would bargain for. Google would be an interesting partner in another respect...the anemic 2.0 offerings of .Mac, once a shining light of Web application offers. An alliance between Google tools and .Mac could breathe a little life into that offering. In exchange, Google and Apple could be working up something on the partnership front to take advantage of synergies between Google initiatives and iTunes.

Or, Dr. Schmidt might just be a cool cat in Jobs' eyes, and he invited him on the board so that he could say, whoa, I'm on the Apple board. Hey, look...there's Al Gore.