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Google CEO Larry Page has been quiet since he stepped out of the spotlight last summer due to an unspecified voice problem, but in recent months, like in today’s Fortune, he is beginning to speak up again.
He sat down recently and gave his second, as Fortune coined it, “wide-ranging conversation with a print publication since becoming CEO of Google in April 2011.” One of the more interesting excerpts concerned Apple, of course, as Page specifically noted “it would be nice if everybody would get along better.” He also divulged that his Mountain View, Calif.-based company has a “big search relationship” with the folks from Cupertino.
Here’s the excerpt:
So in light of that, Apple’s still a partner. It’s a competitor. You and Steve Jobs were friendly.
At times.
At times. You said that whole thing about Android and them being angry about it, that it was for show.
I didn’t say that entirely. I said partly.
[Apple did it] partly for show, to get the troops to rally.
By the way, that’s something I try not to do. I don’t like to rally my company in that way because I think that if you’re looking at somebody else, you’re looking at what they do now, and that’s not how again you stay two or three steps ahead.
So Apple obviously is a huge distribution partner for some of your services. How is the relationship?
What I was trying to say was I think it would be nice if everybody would get along better and the users didn’t suffer as a result of other people’s activities. I try to model that. We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That’s our philosophy. I think sometimes we’re allowed to do that. Sometimes we’re not.
So do you have an ongoing conversation with Apple about these kinds of issues and trying to resolve them?
I mean, obviously we talk to Apple. We have a big search relationship with Apple, and so on, and we talk to them and so on.
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Get the full 70-minute transcript at Fortune.
