Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Obama, Schmidt, Mundie: The Fellowship of the Pings
Back in 2005, Google was represented in Washington by a lone staffer. The company’s political innocence was something of a joke among seasoned beltway players and it didn’t much seem to care. Google was far too busy organizing the world’s information to pay attention to Washington.
How quickly things changed. By 2007, the company’s Washington lobbyists numbered about 12. And now, two years later, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been named by President Obama to his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Told that Macworld Expo 2009 will be Apple’s last, and the first that CEO Steve Jobs does not keynote, investors behaved much as you’d imagine, dragging the company’s shares into the mud in after-hours trading. Fueling the panic: obvious concerns about Jobs’s well-being. And, of course, speculation that Macworld is likely to disappoint devotees hoping for the introduction of some insanely great new product. But would Apple really send Senior VP Phil Schiller out onto the Macworld stage without a cool new product to introduce? 
