The following article is reprint from theToday@PC World blogatPCWorld.com .

The honeymoon is formally over , endingmonths of rumour — Google ’s chief operating officer Dr. Eric Schmidt is resigning from Apple ’s display board of directors after three years .

But in an interesting twist , the announcement came fromAppleand not from Google .

“ Eric has been an excellent Board appendage for Apple , investing his worthful time , gift , love and wisdom to help make Apple successful , ” Steve Jobs , Apple ’s CEO , aver in a press releaseissued by Apple today . “Unfortunately , as Google enter more of Apple ’s center businesses , withAndroid and now Chrome OS , Eric ’s effectiveness as an Apple Board fellow member will be significantly diminished , since he will have to recuse himself from even larger luck of our coming together due to likely conflicts of interest . Therefore , we have mutually make up one’s mind that now is the right time for Eric to resign his situation on Apple ’s Board . ”

Hey , nothing between these two company lately has been boring .

In May , news program broke that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission was looking into whether the two corporate boards were a little too cozy with each other , but Schmidt at the clip say he had no plans to release from Apple ’s control board . Last month , Schmidt again said that leaving the Apple boardwasn’t in his plans . Now he ’s resigning .

allot to the federal Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 , a individual is n’t allowed to serve on board of director for two separate fellowship if the businesses directly compete . In the case of Apple and Google , that was madea chip more problematicin early July , when Google declare itsGoogle Chrome OSnetbook operating system , which heads more into Apple ’s turf .

As of Monday first light , nothing was post early today on Google ’s corporal Web pages aboutSchmidt ’s Apple board resignation .

So , what ’s this all mean for Apple , Google and consumer ?

Well , it could stand for even more competition between the two company in the future tense , and that give perfect sense to me . Both company are true innovators , with attentive ideas , designs , and products occupy their pipelines on a regular basis . It was only a matter of sentence before what they are doing separately could get in the way of what they were doing in their boardroom .

That ’s not a bad thing , actually . It means that they ’re continuing to occur up with newfangled idea and products and that it ’s time to separate up the marriage — which certainly had some strained moments due to product overlap — and do their own thing .

For consumer , Schmidt ’s resignation wo n’t have a direct impact , surely , but it could be a herald of new nerveless things come from both companies in the future tense .