London, Sept 3 : Google chairman Eric Schmidt has called Apple’s Steve Jobs as ‘the best’ company boss in 50 or 100 years.

Schmidt, who sat on Apple’s board between 2006 and 2009, handed down the praise at a technology conference, and said that Apple’s former CEO deserved the praise because he built the company into a powerful corporation not once, but twice.

The assessment puts Jobs ahead of other American industry giants such as oil magnate John D Rockefeller and car maker Henry Ford, the BBC reports.

Jobs'' first term as head of Apple lasted from the late 1970s when the company was founded until 1985. He resigned after losing a boardroom battle over the future of the company.

In 1997, Steve Jobs returned as CEO and launched the iMac range of personal computers.

Since then he has introduced the iPod, iPad and iPhone, all of which had made huge amounts of money for Apple. (ANI)