Forum Moderators: goodroi
Sun Microsystems and Google plan to announce a collaborative effort that some analysts speculate could elevate the profile of the OpenOffice.org...Details won't emerge publicly until Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun CEO Scott McNealy take the stage on Tuesday at a news conference in Mountain View, Calif. But one strong possibility is a partnership that could help shift personal computing out of Microsoft's domain and into Google's.
A move to distribute and popularize OpenOffice or StarOffice would be a challenge to Microsoft's money maker, Office, which could significantly weaken it's revenue stream.
Sun's president posted this to his blog [blogs.sun.com] on Sunday:
But value is returning to the desktop applications, and not simply through Windows Vista... From the obvious, to music sharing clients and development tools, there's a resurgence of interest in resident software that executes on your desktop, yet connects to network services. Without a browser. Like Skype. Or QNext. Or Google Earth. And Java? OpenOffice and StarOffice?If I were a betting man, I'd bet the world was about to change.
Personally, I think Microsoft thought they could just take control of the standards for email and browsers by destroying companies that charged for those products and then they could just do whatever they wanted.
Funny thing is, there isn't any standards for something like Office except that it needs to exchange data with other applications so if someone like Google can teach them a lesson in being a large corporate bully, then god bless them and godspeed.
<strong words from an atheist, eh?>
The article that I read mentioned that "Google could be buying Sun servers to run the Wi-Fi network".
Google has no direct interest in office productivity software, but it cares a lot about Linux vs. Windows as well as IE vs. Firefox; and, of course, it cares enormously about the Search market.
MS has a consistent pattern of trying to obliterate the competition in every important market they enter, following a "winner takes all" approach to competition.
Google knows that MS is coming at them with all guns blazing. MS announced a long time ago plans to weave search technology tightly into the fabric of the next generation of Windows.
If MS is successful, it could destroy the incentive for anyone to use Google for searches.
So, given these circumstances the best -- perhaps the only viable -- defense for Google is to mount a strong offense: do whatever it takes to reduce revenues flowing to MS, and reduce the stranglehold MS has over so many users -- so that they will be less likely to adopt the new MS offerings, and more likely to continue using Google for their searches.
Also since is it multi format - you can't moan - unless you need all the visual crap of office.
Fair play to Sun and Google - but i'm hanging a little to see how much they will be charging for it
"Better" is the only way to win that contest, and due to the pain of changing software, "much better" is probably the only thing that would work.
I think it's about getting good, free software into the hands of students, teachers, and small shops like most of us.
5 years from now, retrainig won't be much of an issue if the workforce of tommorow is becoming familiar with the software today. So they don't need to be better or much better, "comparable and free" will be the winning edge down the road.
They are all being very very cautious about divulging information on this deal aside from the JRE / Toolbar deal. Direct questions about a webOS are getting very grey answers.
how much retraining would people need to use OpenOffice? from my experience most people only scratch the surface of the functionality anyway - if you look at the OpenOffice2 beta its incredibly easy to use and there is a hell of lot of funtionality in there (been trying base on different db formats and its been working extremely well).
Dunno about anywhere else, but I work for a (large, fairly prestigious) bluechip here in the UK and nobody ever gets any training on this kind of stuff anyway.
We're a small business, also, and I doubt that we could successfully pass MS Office costs to our customers, and I know we can't absorb those costs. OpenOffice may have its warts, but it's effective enough to do what we need.
I don't think there would be a lot of retraining employees. OOo is fairly simplisitic. So as long as you're not a power Office user, I think the switch would be painless.
Chip-
as long as you're not a power Office user, I think the switch would be painless.some webbased AJAX / "rich" editors can already cover 99% of what the typical user usually does with word
Memo to Google and Sun: Don't call newsconferences touting big announcements when all you're announcing is some kind of mundane bundling deal.
Nothing mundane about Google firing a loud shot across Microsoft's bow.
I've been giggles all morning as Google is the last knight left standing to take up the fight lost by Lotus, Word Perfect and IBM with it's final failed OS/2 attempt in the early 90s. Think about it, they were all mighty titans of their day and lost miserably to Microsoft, this is DEATHMATCH 2005 GOOGLE vs. MS and I'm loving every minute of it.
BTW, your price per PC is already lower thanks to OpenOffice as anyone buying a home PC can say "NO THANKS!" to MS Works (blech), MS Office or the Lotus Suite (pew!)
I don't think there would be a lot of retraining employees. OOo is fairly simplisitic.
A lot of employees are way more simplistic than OpenOffice, you'll be surprised.
MSFT 24.99 -0.51
GOOG 313.45 -5.23
SUNW 4.22 +0.03
This also happens to the exact same price being charged by other providers of OpenOffice.
The key difference is that Google is in an ideal position to let millions of people learn about this alternative.
You are talking about the cost of the Suite, not the cost to maintain it from an IT perspective.
I haven't heard much one way or another from admins on which is easier to deploy or keep running. If Sun is serious about OpenOffice, they'll work to fix any maintenance issues.
* See post # 4 in this old thread on who can and can't open certain .doc formats [webmasterworld.com ]
[news.yahoo.com...]
The above news can be resumed in one word: HYPE.
This is reality:
[microsoft.com...]
[edited by: zafile at 8:02 pm (utc) on Oct. 4, 2005]
It just isn't google style and they are not gaining anything significant out of it. There wasn't even a press release from google, but, the president of SUN says in his blog, "the world is about to change this week", predicting new ways to access software." doh!
A lot of employees are way more simplistic than OpenOffice, you'll be surprised.
Ctrl N or Ctrl O.
Type type type type, bold, type type type, list, type type type type.
Ctrl S.
Simplistic. :)
It is sad to see SUN milking off Google for all it's worth.
I'd say over 75% of the workforce don't - based on previous job in helpdesk.
Ok, I found the Ctrl key, so I type it:
1 time if I want the C;
2 times if I want the t;
3 times if I want the r;
4 times if I want the l ... right?
Can't I just use the individual keys, cause this seems like a lot of work!
.oO(suspects that conversation has probably played
out at some helpdesk somewhere)Oo.
Its been summed up here.
"There really isn't much depth to this partnership," said industry analyst Rob Enderle."I think Eric is doing this as personal favor for Scott," he said. "It provides a certain amount of press and visibility to Sun when there hasn't been very many positive things going on at the company."
I used to work for a great company once upon a time.. then they started announcing meaningless partnerships with companies like Siebel, BEA etc.. just distracted people from their focus of selling the core products because the guys at the top wanted the sales force to do "something" so that they could pat each other on the back.
Must be nice to have employees who know to use CTRL O and CTRL S.
I'd say over 75% of the workforce don't - based on previous job in helpdesk.
