While visiting South Korea this week, former Google Chief Executive and current Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was amusingly spotted taking photos using his personal smartphone. While taking candid shots using a phone is unremarkable these days, Schmidt's actions nonetheless caught the eye of South Korean publication Osen.
Apparently, one of Alphabet Inc.'s top executives uses an Apple iPhone.
That's right. While Google has two powerful flagship units right now, the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P, the executive chairman nonetheless opted to use a trusty Apple iPhone to take pictures during the event.
What's even more amusing is the fact that Schmidt was taking photos during an event where one of Alphabet Inc.'s latest artificial intelligence systems, dubbed DeepMind AlphaGo, was being put to the test. In order to determine the capabilities of the new machine, the system was pitted against Chinese board game Go champion Lee Se-dol.
The matchup between man and machine was quite notable, though ultimately Lee lost to Alphabet's system not once, but twice.
It was during the event that Schmidt was spotted taking photos with an iPhone. He also spotted sending a photo to one of his contacts.
While there are some who initially alleged that the Alphabet executive was actually using an Android device with an iOS skin, the fact that another iPhone user was detected through the smartphone's Airdrop feature all but negated that possibility.
So yes, for all intents and purposes, Alphabet's chief executive is an iPhone user.
As surprising as the news is to some, however, Schmidt had already done something similar in the past. During his stint as Google's chief executive, he candidly stated that he still preferred using a Blackberry as opposed to Android's offerings then. When asked why, he simply stated that he likes physical keyboards. But there were Android phones with keyboards during that time, too.
It's not just Schmidt, either. Before Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo! in 2012, she used to be one of Google's senior executives. During her stint at the company, she also used an Apple iPhone, as shown by her tweets and photo uploads.
In fact, even Google's headquarters is riddled with Macs, with its engineers and other staff using Apple laptops for their work as opposed to the company's home-grown device, the Chromebook.
A little product diversity never hurt anyone, after all.
