Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, has been elected to Apple's board of directors. In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that "Eric is obviously doing a terrific job as CEO of Google, and we look forward to his contributions as a member of Apple's board of directors."

Schmidt joined Google in March 2001 as chairman of the board and as CEO in August of the same year, replacing Google co-founder Larry Page in that position.

Prior to Google, Schmidt was chairman and chief executive officer of Novell from 1997 to 2001 and chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems until 1997. Before joining Sun in 1983, Schmidt was a member of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog.