Siliconistan

They say “enemy of enemy is a friend”.  Although in the past few years, Apple and Google have become eachothers’ competitors as well, Apple and Google’s rivalry with Microsoft is stronger than that. Now when Apple and Google’s CEOs meet at Calafia – a coffee shop in Palo Alto – eyebrows raise throughout the world. What are they talking about? Are they planning to do something together?

Rumors flooded the tech industry when someone sent an email to Gizmodo with a photograph of Steve Jobs (CEO Apple) & Eric Shmidt (CEO Google) sitting together and enjoying coffee. Now this was an unannounced meeting between two tech giants. You can’t ignore this, can you?

Some say they might have discussed possibility of joint mobile advertising platform as the rumor says Apple wants to launch i-Ad – a mobile advertising system through which advertisements can be distributed over mobile platforms especially on iPods & iPhones. Maybe Google, fearing from a tough competition in this area, is trying to convince Apple in “doing it together”. Or maybe Steve Jobs – the charisma guy – tried to win hearts at Google labs to do some of its upcoming innovations jointly. Nobody knows who has an upper hand but one thing is sure, if they join hands, it will hurt Microsoft which is trying to do some bing and bang these days.

In last 1 year, we have seen Apple and Google fighting with eachother. Google’s CEO was removed from Apple’s board, Apple acquired AdMob and Google launched Nexus One with HTC in competition with iPhone – these were just few of the news that tell us Google and Apple are becoming real competitors. But this secret meeting between Steve Jobs and Eric Shmidt can change or cool down Google-Apple rivalry.

Lets cross our fingers and watch what happens next.