Few corporate rivalries are more competitive than the one that exists between Google and Apple. And yet, according to a recent article from CNET, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has immense respect for the man who made Apple what it is today: Steve Jobs.

Indeed, during a talk Thursday night, when Schmidt was asked to name his heroes, he only had once answer, and he put it out there quickly: again, Steve Jobs.

“We could all aspire to be a small percentage of Steve,” Schmidt said during his talk. He was on the stage at the Commonwealth Club of Silicon Valley, addressing a room of about 400 people with colleague Jonathan Rosenberg. Rosenberg is Google’s Senior Vice President of Products, and he and Schmidt just recently published a new book together called How Google Works. The Silicon Valley event was meant to promote the book.

Schimdt and Jobs met each other in 1993, and their relationship evolved and adapted until Jobs’ death in 2011. At the time of their meeting, neither man was the corporate titan he would become. Schimdt was working at Sun Microsystems, while Jobs was still with NeXT, his second computer company. Jobs, of course, had started NeXT after being ousted from Apple.

Fast forward a decade and everything had changed: Jobs returned to Apple and took the CEO office, while Schmidt became the CEO of Google. The friendship between the two men persisted, however. In 2006, Schmidt was invited to join Apple’s board, an invitation he accepted. The Google chairman held his post with Apple – concurrently with his role at Google – until 2009, when Jobs vowed to go to war with Google over Android.

Since then, Apple and Google have been embroiled in numerous legal battles, most of them over similar features between iOS and Apple. Evidently, though, Schmidt’s respect for Jobs has not diminished in light of the corporate war.

“Exceptional people are worth hanging out with, because there is a good chance they are going to change the world,” Schmidt told his audience in Silicon Valley on Thursday night.