Early last week came the announcement that Arthur Levinson would be stepping down from his position at the Board of Directors at Google, a seat he had occupied for the last 5 years. What this tipped me off to this was the pattern I noticed. Levinson’s departure from the Google board signified a special occasion. With him resigning and Google CEO Eric Schmidt having done so earlier this year; the two boards now have no shared board members. (Al Gore is a common advisor though).

As I came to know about the resignation, the first thought in my mind was that Google and Apple had set the stage to engage in open and overt competition in the consumer markets; that one or the other was about to make their first move to capture market share in the others ‘territory’.

One week on and today came the evidence that proved my theory. Today saw the launch of the ‘Droid Does’ campaign. As most may have guessed ‘Droid’ is short for Android a.k.a. Google’s mobile OS. Some additional details to go along are that it will be released through Verizon (the iPhone is serviced by AT&T) in November.

The product positioning and competitive strategy at play are quite clear, so I’ll just let you watch it.