But now you're mixing up the chronology. Google had already bought Android and bet on next-gen smartphones well before Eric Schmidt joined the Apple board. And

But now you're mixing up the chronology. Google had already bought Android and bet on next-gen smartphones well before Eric Schmidt joined the Apple board. And that bet was already serious and high-level. Schmidt wasn't involved in the acquisition, but Larry Page was. They were also, correctly, talking about mobile as the "next great frontier of search". If that wasn't a big deal at Google, I don't know what could be.