Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board of Directors

Apple has recently announced that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be joining the Apple board of directors.  People seem to think this will mean more support for Mac OS X in Google products, but it hasn't exactly worked out that way for Oracle or Intuit (Larry Ellison and Bill Campbell have also been on the Apple board in the past).  I've always found it ironic that Safari defaults to using Google for search, yet many Google apps either don't run at all or run degraded in Safari.  I'd guess this is more an Apple response to the Microsoft Zune.  Whatever the reasons, it's clear that there is definite potential for some partnerships that benefit both companies here.  Google searches for music giving the iTunes store as an option, being able to purchase videos from Google Video in iTunes, etc.  Both companies are very heavy into digital media, without a lot of overlap.  Should be interesting to see where this leads 18 months or so out (and if you're a regular reader of my blog, it's sure starting to look like 18-24 months out is going to be an interesting time, at least from a tech standpoint).
--jeremy
Apple, Google, iTunes, Microsoft, Zune, AAPL