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From one viewpoint, this is akin to a king marrying off his children to a rival kingdom.

Having your CEO on the board of another company helps drive alignment and collaboration. It’s a solid business strategy.

Sometime it drives long term alignment. Other times you end up letting a fox in the henhouse. In this case it sounds like Eric Schmidt was a fox.

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But neither of those outcomes is desirable from a wider viewpoint. Society doesn’t benefit from companies only innovating by stealing from each other, nor does it benefit from active collusion.

Active collusion - right. Companies stealing from one another? I think it can be argued that the consumer benefits from corporations imitating the good ideas of other corporations. A world with Android and iOS is better than a world only with iOS.

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