Google, Sun to finally take on Microsoft?

Nearly two years after they were expected to announce a Microsoft Office killer, Sun Microsystems and Google may finally be planning to do it. Or not.

By way of background, following much hype about a partnership in October 2005, Sun and Google held an anticlimactic news conference in which all they announced was that they were collaborating on work on Sun's OpenOffice.org, Java and OpenSolaris and Google's Toolbar.

But now Mary Jo Foley, in her ZDNet blog, has reported that she got confirmation from a Sun representative that the company plans to make a StarOffice-related announcement on Wednesday that will have a "significant impact in the industry about the adoption of Open Document Format and availability of free MS Office-compatible comprehensive office suite."

Foley was tipped off by a report on the Google Operating System blog over the weekend that Google had secretly added Sun's StarOffice software suite to its Google Pack of recommended applications. StarOffice is comprised of a word processor, presentation app, database and spreadsheet tool among other things, and as such competes with Microsoft Office.

Google offers StarOffice in Google Pack.

(Credit: Google)

"The next step would probably be the addition of a plug-in that lets you synchronize local documents with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, so you can have the best of the both worlds: edit complicated documents offline, collaborate and store files securely online," the Google Operating System blog proposes. "For now, StarOffice is integrated with Google Search and Google Desktop."

A Google-Sun alliance may not be the only threat Microsoft faces. Foley cites a Wired blog that quotes an Adobe platform manager as saying he wouldn't rule out Adobe's entering the office productivity software market.

It has long been speculated that Google is vying for Microsoft's desktop software market by offering a free, Web-based alternative with its Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The company solved the problem of users needing offline access to the information by offering Google Gears, a browser extension, in May.

Poor Microsoft; getting it from all directions.

[ghostofitpast]

Ersatz

By way of disclaimer, it has been several years since my last experiments with using StarOffice. This is because my experiences during those experiments reminded me of little more than Henry Slesar's story "Ersatz" from Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS collection. Since that time, I have always been able to recognize when a presentation has come from StarOffice. Say what you want about Microsoft; but, where PowerPoint is concerned, they seem to have homed in on just how look-and-feel can have rhetorical impact. I do not think anyone at Sun ever appreciated this, and I am not sure that Google is any better.

[kool_skatkat]

Keynote

mmm, how does it compare to Keynote? better?

[rbiz]

PowerPoint?

If StarOffice doesn't do it for you then I have to be honest and
tell you that PowerPoint doesn't do it for me either. Keynote
kills PowerPoint Qualitatively and in time well spent making a
presentation. I spent the better part of two decades wondering
how long I'd have to put up with every picture and video I
entered into PowerPoint going to hell - No more. Interestingly
some of my presentations get broadcasted from time to time
and when I used to hand stuff over in PowerPoint the television
graphics people had to completely redo all my presentation
graphics, but with Keynote - No more.

Just because PowerPoint is [almost] the only presentation player
on the block does not make it a good one.

[Simon Elliott]

The future for OpenOffice?

If StarOffice is to become de-facto freeware, what will be the effect
on OpenOffice?

Can any Open Source community compete with the
Sun/Google bottomless money-pit?

http://web.mac.com/simon_elliott/iWeb/simon_elliott%
40mac.com/Software.html

[kool_skatkat]

Can star office

Can star office exists without Open Office?

[Troll Hard]

I can't wait for Google Office

to be an online version of OpenOffice.Org or StarOffice.

Anyway Commander Spock is ready to tell us it doesn't support IRR or ERR, and I will ask Spock to give me the formulas for IRR and ERR as every CIO of a bank has to know them and other accounting formulas by default to check to see if programs are actually doing what they claim to be doing.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

[flickrz]

Staroffice is crap

Google just added another bloated piece of software to its bloat pack. Its bread and butter is search engine and should concentrate on that only. Bloated Staroffice is not going to add any value to google as a company. Google, if you have more money than raise pay of your engineers instead of doing all these gimmicks. Don't irritate Mr.Softy so much that you loose your focus.

[rbiz]

NO WEB APPS - PERIOD

I'm for anything that helps get us all off of the Microsoft merry-
go-round of office applications, bearing in mind that the latest
versions of MS Office are yet again sticking us with yet another
proprietary document format, attempting yet again to lock the
entire planet into yet another MS format. Evenso, I truely cannot
and will not support any web-based applications. Of course if
an office app. interacts with the web seemlessly then great, but I
am not ever going to use an application that requires me to be
connected to the internet, or that I have to open a web browser
to use.

It looks like Intuit may be going down this road with Quicken,
and I'm committed to ceasing my use of Quicken if/when that
happens.