Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google (GOOG), resigned from the Apple (AAPL) board of directors. Apple says it was because of increasing conflicts between the two company’s products.

There has been an uneasy detente between Apple and Google over the course of the three years that Schmidt has been on the Apple board, but Google’s search engine business is no longer growing rapidly and it sees products like its Android operating system as a chance to reignite that pace of its top line expansion. Apple, in turn, is no longer selling Macs and iPods at the same rate it was a year ago.

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The end of peace between Apple and Google sets up a triumvirate of combatants with Microsoft being at the third corner trying to protect its hugely profitable operating system with the launch of Windows 7. It is also attempting to hold its lead in PC browsers with the latest edition of Internet Explorer. Microsoft’s new search deal with Yahoo! (YHOO) escalates the matching of software skill and capital between the largest search company and the largest software company in the world.

Microsoft had made the competition among the tech titans even more complex by its major effort to get its handset operating system onto as many smartphones as it can around the world. It is willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build alliances, which puts in the path of the growth of Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iPhone software features.

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Executive Producer: Philip MacDonald

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