Both men have decades of high-level experience in information technology. Schmidt was CTO at Sun during its heyday. Novell hired him as CEO in 1997, hoping he could turn the company away from its proprietary PC networking products onto the open, TCP/IP-based Internet. He was hired away by Google four years later.

Mundie, who has worked in the computer industry for nearly 40 years, was founder and eventual CEO of Alliant, which made parallel computing systems. After Alliant went broke in 1992, he joined Microsoft and led development of Windows for non-PC products including game consoles and handheld gadgets.

Silicon Valley geeks will probably applaud Obama's choices. But those who may not be happy. They will likely distrust the head of Google as counselor to the President on information gathering about individuals. They may also note that Mundie was a key player in Microsoft's program, which saw as an attempt by Microsoft to control the content on their computers, specifically to block the playing of downloaded music and videos.

But critics looking for a conflict need only point to his employer's role in Washington: "in any country the government is usually the biggest customer," Mundie in March, "and that's true for Microsoft."