Just went over the statement from Apple about "Eric having to excuse himself from meetings" and it strikes me, does that not give Apple a very huge advantage knowing about things that Google might have been working on that may not be public?
Secondarily, it has also caused discomfort to Google regarding the monopoly issue.
I'm pretty sure they were very careful with this.<p>It's definitely not uncommon for people that are CEO in one company to be on the bod of another, as soon as conflicts of interest arise and they're mild you recluse yourself.<p>In this case the conflicts of interest were so large that Schmidt would have been waiting in the hallway during any subject in pretty much any meeting, continuing in that position is then no longer useful.