Comments on: Google and Sun deal: That's it?

Blogosphere greets joint announcement from Google and Sun with a resounding chorus of "Big deal."

Here's my prediction

So google recently announced their plans to launch a nation wide free WiFi network, and they have already started it in San Francisco. Key word being free. How does this benefit them? The answer is this alliance with Sun Microsystems. I think their plan is to setup a free nation-wide network, then use Sun's universal computer language (Java) to have every digital device in the world have access to the net anywhere in the U.S. If this is true, then what search engine will each WiFi device in the future be setup with? You guessed it - Google.
Google sets up a free internet, but then makes it so that everyone using it will be encouraged to use their already famous search engine. Google doesn't need to dominate in China, even though they are trying to, because in a few years everyone will be popping onto the internet with anything from a laptop to a cell phone to a watch to a toothbrush, and they will all goto Google - easily increasing the traffic at Google's site tenfold, and therefore the size of their wallets as well.

[dysonlu]

Questionable Longterm Growth Potential

So, what you're saying is that Google is trying to grow their revenue by basically adding more eyeballs?! Tons of now defunct .com companies of the 90's had tried that business model.

Let me tell you one thing: Not Google, or ANY other company for that matter, can dominate the Net like Microsoft dominates the desktop. The Net is infinitely more democratic than the desktop for one single company to rule it all: people switches web pages more frequently and more easily than they can (are willing to) switch their desktop apps. No one company can exercise a stranglehold on Net users.

[dysonlu]

Questionable Longterm Growth Potential

So, what you're saying is that Google is trying to grow their revenue by basically adding more eyeballs?! Tons of now defunct .com companies of the 90's had tried that business model.

Let me tell you one thing: Not Google, or ANY other company for that matter, can dominate the Net like Microsoft dominates the desktop. The Net is infinitely more democratic than the desktop for one single company to rule it all: people switches web pages more frequently and more easily than they can (are willing to) switch their desktop apps. No one company can exercise a stranglehold on Net users.

Here's my prediction

So google recently announced their plans to launch a nation wide free WiFi network, and they have already started it in San Francisco. Key word being free. How does this benefit them? The answer is this alliance with Sun Microsystems. I think their plan is to setup a free nation-wide network, then use Sun's universal computer language (Java) to have every digital device in the world have access to the net anywhere in the U.S. If this is true, then what search engine will each WiFi device in the future be setup with? You guessed it - Google.
Google sets up a free internet, but then makes it so that everyone using it will be encouraged to use their already famous search engine. Google doesn't need to dominate in China, even though they are trying to, because in a few years everyone will be popping onto the internet with anything from a laptop to a cell phone to a watch to a toothbrush, and they will all goto Google - easily increasing the traffic at Google's site tenfold, and therefore the size of their wallets as well.

[dysonlu]

Questionable Longterm Growth Potential

So, what you're saying is that Google is trying to grow their revenue by basically adding more eyeballs?! Tons of now defunct .com companies of the 90's had tried that business model.

Let me tell you one thing: Not Google, or ANY other company for that matter, can dominate the Net like Microsoft dominates the desktop. The Net is infinitely more democratic than the desktop for one single company to rule it all: people switches web pages more frequently and more easily than they can (are willing to) switch their desktop apps. No one company can exercise a stranglehold on Net users.

[dysonlu]

Questionable Longterm Growth Potential

So, what you're saying is that Google is trying to grow their revenue by basically adding more eyeballs?! Tons of now defunct .com companies of the 90's had tried that business model.

Let me tell you one thing: Not Google, or ANY other company for that matter, can dominate the Net like Microsoft dominates the desktop. The Net is infinitely more democratic than the desktop for one single company to rule it all: people switches web pages more frequently and more easily than they can (are willing to) switch their desktop apps. No one company can exercise a stranglehold on Net users.

[sunergeos]

Bloggers are diluting c|net

I've been visiting the News.com site since the 90's and I have
become more disapointed of late that c|net is allowing bloggers
to dilute their award winning reporting. It seems that there is a
lack of due diligence in the bloggers that they use to actually
discuss something of merit or to lend thoughtful discussion to
current topics. I did a Google search and from the first page of
results I found the following comments about the Sun/Google
deal that are in stark contrast to the ones posted here. Could it
have been possible to include a different perspective on the
topic rather than combing through posts to find those that taint
the discussion toward the slant you meant? Is that too much to
ask of c|net?

"News.com speculates on what might be announced saying that
it, could shift personal computing out of Microsoft's domain and
into Google's." Wow, that's a lot of speculation. Much of the talk
about what's up focuses around Google and Sun doing
something together with Sun's free, open source, OpenOffice
software suite."
Gary Price, SearchEngineWatch

"Now if you are talking about these hints of some sort of a
Google-aided distribution of Sun's StarOffice software, now
that's big. That's a shot across the bow at Microsoft Office, and
their forthcoming Office 12 release."
Russell Shaw, ZDNet Blogs

"The possibilities are endless. The speculation is pretty wild even
so."
Dan Gillmor, BayOSphere

"The announcement is intriguing, particularly in light of recent
reports that Google is gunning to ultimately knock off Microsoft
as the leading computing platform. What better partner to have
in that effort than Sun, at one time Microsoft's arch enemy."
Jack McCarthy, InfoWorld

"Sun Microsystems and Google are expected to announce a deal
tomorrow according to eWeek. They join speculation that an
operating system is at the core of it. They assume it a desktop
OS.  I wonder of it might actually be a Web OS, which would be
one of those surprise checkmate moves."
ItSeemsToMe Blog

[KTLA_knew]

Heh

"That's a shot across the bow at Microsoft Office, and
their forthcoming Office 12 release."

Heh, I think they'll be lucky if this shot, at its apex, got up above Office 12's waterline. Certainly anyone on the bow never saw it.

OO will do what it will, and slowly eat away at home use, tiny bits of business use, but it would have done that at exactly the same speed without this deal. Google's over-hyped mindshare doesn't really help here.

People like to talk about mindshare like it's a replacement for technology. It isn't, not in the end.

[R. U. Sirius]

quite accurate

I am disappointed that Cnet seems to have missed the forest for the trees on this story. Over the past few weeks, Cnet has run a number of stories pointing towards Google using the web as an OS. What seems to be missing in the Google/Sun analysis, is that the partnership is further evidence of that move, and as such, is huge.

Sun has always been an extremely visionary company, but often way ahead of the market. Google though, has had spot on market timing, and if there is anyone who can deliver the Sun vision of network based computing, it's Google.

Bottom line is watch this partnership become more and more important as time passes.

[sunergeos]

Bloggers are diluting c|net

I've been visiting the News.com site since the 90's and I have
become more disapointed of late that c|net is allowing bloggers
to dilute their award winning reporting. It seems that there is a
lack of due diligence in the bloggers that they use to actually
discuss something of merit or to lend thoughtful discussion to
current topics. I did a Google search and from the first page of
results I found the following comments about the Sun/Google
deal that are in stark contrast to the ones posted here. Could it
have been possible to include a different perspective on the
topic rather than combing through posts to find those that taint
the discussion toward the slant you meant? Is that too much to
ask of c|net?

"News.com speculates on what might be announced saying that
it, could shift personal computing out of Microsoft's domain and
into Google's." Wow, that's a lot of speculation. Much of the talk
about what's up focuses around Google and Sun doing
something together with Sun's free, open source, OpenOffice
software suite."
Gary Price, SearchEngineWatch

"Now if you are talking about these hints of some sort of a
Google-aided distribution of Sun's StarOffice software, now
that's big. That's a shot across the bow at Microsoft Office, and
their forthcoming Office 12 release."
Russell Shaw, ZDNet Blogs

"The possibilities are endless. The speculation is pretty wild even
so."
Dan Gillmor, BayOSphere

"The announcement is intriguing, particularly in light of recent
reports that Google is gunning to ultimately knock off Microsoft
as the leading computing platform. What better partner to have
in that effort than Sun, at one time Microsoft's arch enemy."
Jack McCarthy, InfoWorld

"Sun Microsystems and Google are expected to announce a deal
tomorrow according to eWeek. They join speculation that an
operating system is at the core of it. They assume it a desktop
OS.  I wonder of it might actually be a Web OS, which would be
one of those surprise checkmate moves."
ItSeemsToMe Blog

[KTLA_knew]

Heh

"That's a shot across the bow at Microsoft Office, and
their forthcoming Office 12 release."

Heh, I think they'll be lucky if this shot, at its apex, got up above Office 12's waterline. Certainly anyone on the bow never saw it.

OO will do what it will, and slowly eat away at home use, tiny bits of business use, but it would have done that at exactly the same speed without this deal. Google's over-hyped mindshare doesn't really help here.

People like to talk about mindshare like it's a replacement for technology. It isn't, not in the end.

[R. U. Sirius]

quite accurate

I am disappointed that Cnet seems to have missed the forest for the trees on this story. Over the past few weeks, Cnet has run a number of stories pointing towards Google using the web as an OS. What seems to be missing in the Google/Sun analysis, is that the partnership is further evidence of that move, and as such, is huge.

Sun has always been an extremely visionary company, but often way ahead of the market. Google though, has had spot on market timing, and if there is anyone who can deliver the Sun vision of network based computing, it's Google.

Bottom line is watch this partnership become more and more important as time passes.

The first step

Anyone consider Google buying Sun?

Oh quite possibly.

I didn't realise quite how ambitious Google were, until I saw they were making a search engine - for mainframes !

The first step

Anyone consider Google buying Sun?

Oh quite possibly.

I didn't realise quite how ambitious Google were, until I saw they were making a search engine - for mainframes !

[linuxbeatsMS]

Office will go down !!! StarOffice and Projity win

The most useful outcome of this partnership will clearly be less directly financial gain and more on influence. Microsoft's strength due to the monopoly with Office is undeniable. I have been using two beta's recently (StarOffice 8 and Projity for project management) that offer cost effective alternatives that eliminate the need to use Office. If these are successful it will be an enormous blow to Microsoft's plans to leverage this strengh and extend into ERP, CRM and other areas. StarOffice has the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation equivalents. Projity has a project management solution that is a replacement for Project. These solutions open existing files so switching does not take time or effort. If these get out there then Microsoft will be in trouble !

The Google/Sun partnership will be most effective if they can bring Google's great consumer attentive audience to solutions like StarOffice (http://www.sun.com ) and Projity ( http://www.projity.com ). StarOffice 8 is out of beta and the Projity solution I think is coming out of beta. If Microsoft gets knocked in these areas it will become much more difficult to extend into other areas. That my friends may ultimately be the outcome of yesterdays mumbled, opaque announcements......

[nazzdeq]

Not even close...

Almost everyone has MS Office already, they don't even need to upgrade. There's no point in switching to Star or Open office as there is zero gain.

Corporations are not going to allow employees to use this Star/Open/Google Office for creating documents.

This is actually Google's first big mistake. Google is one big ad agency. Not sure how this will boost their profit. Are they going to show ads as you type in a word doc?

[linuxbeatsMS]

Office will go down !!! StarOffice and Projity win

The most useful outcome of this partnership will clearly be less directly financial gain and more on influence. Microsoft's strength due to the monopoly with Office is undeniable. I have been using two beta's recently (StarOffice 8 and Projity for project management) that offer cost effective alternatives that eliminate the need to use Office. If these are successful it will be an enormous blow to Microsoft's plans to leverage this strengh and extend into ERP, CRM and other areas. StarOffice has the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation equivalents. Projity has a project management solution that is a replacement for Project. These solutions open existing files so switching does not take time or effort. If these get out there then Microsoft will be in trouble !

The Google/Sun partnership will be most effective if they can bring Google's great consumer attentive audience to solutions like StarOffice (http://www.sun.com ) and Projity ( http://www.projity.com ). StarOffice 8 is out of beta and the Projity solution I think is coming out of beta. If Microsoft gets knocked in these areas it will become much more difficult to extend into other areas. That my friends may ultimately be the outcome of yesterdays mumbled, opaque announcements......

[nazzdeq]

Not even close...

Almost everyone has MS Office already, they don't even need to upgrade. There's no point in switching to Star or Open office as there is zero gain.

Corporations are not going to allow employees to use this Star/Open/Google Office for creating documents.

This is actually Google's first big mistake. Google is one big ad agency. Not sure how this will boost their profit. Are they going to show ads as you type in a word doc?