President Obama appointed General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. 

Having worked with Immelt in the past, Ballmer apparently wanted the world to know where he stands. He released the following statement on the Official Microsoft blog:

"Jeff Immelt and I started our careers together at Proctor & Gamble, and I have enormous respect for the success he’s had at GE. He is an ideal business leader to chair the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and help drive a focus on what we can all do to increase American competitiveness and create new jobs."

Microsoft is all about some competitiveness lately, as evidenced by the company recently joining Fairsearch, the coalition ruffling Google’s feathers over its pending acquisition of ITA Software. 

Yesterday during Google’s earnings call, Schmidt managed to sneak in a jab at Microsoft (at least that’s how we interpreted it) by saying that Googe’s competitors are assisting in spreading misinformation about competition. 

Schmidt has referred to Bing as its main competitor in recent months, and Google told us a while back, "Microsoft is our largest competitor and lobbies regulators against every acquisition we make."