Apple ‘safe and beautiful’ says Google chief Schmidt

Could the man who was caught in the middle of the bitter war between Google and Apple be trying to pour oil on troubled waters? Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who once sat on the Apple board but resigned in 2009 as relations between the two technology giants collapsed, has suggested that anyone concerned about computer security should use a Mac rather than a PC.
 
However, the Google executive chairman (above) quickly got back on message by telling the All Things Digital D9 technology conference in California that Google Chrome was the most secure web browser and that Gmail was the best form of email.
 
But Schmidt also praised Apple for making "beautiful products" and said Google had a "very, very good search partnership" with Steve Jobs's firm, even though the pair are at loggerheads in the smartphone market where the iPhone and Android devices are pitted against each other.

The 46-year-old also admitted that it was his fault that another of Google's fierce rivals, Facebook, caught the search engine out when it became the biggest social networking site in the world.

Talking about Facebook's sudden emergence towards the end of the last decade, Schmidt said: "I clearly knew I had to do something and I failed to do it. The CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up."

He also said that he "admired" what Facebook had achieved - this despite the news last month that Facebook had hired a PR firm to help plant negative stories about Google's privacy record.

Schmidt said that in his view there were now four main companies at the cutting edge of technology - Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. He suggested that eBay and Twitter were not far behind, but when asked why he omitted the once-ubiquitious Microsoft from that list Schmidt said that Bill Gates's company was no longer "driving the revolution in the mind of consumers".

He explained that Google dominated information, Facebook led identity and social networking, Amazon was number one for shopping and Apple was the best at making "beautiful products".

However, the boundaries are becoming blurred. The latest battlefield between the four giants looks to be cloud computing - where a user can store data remotely and access it on different devices. Amazon and Google have both launched cloud-based products and the Apple's iCloud is set to be announced next week. ·