According to interviews in Bloomberg’s documentary series, Game Changers… Sergey and Larry had interviewed some 12-13 candidates to become CEO of Google but didn’t like any of ‘em. Instead they wanted Jobs, their quote-unquote hero, to be the CEO. Unfortunately Jobs was busy running some other company that was about to embark on a renaissance for the ages.
Google changed the game of search. Apple changed the game of a few important things including the business of selling music.