Fascinating Google/Sun Speculation

[Jeff]

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The Google Office I'd Go For (http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000959.html)

Posted by Harry McCracken (mageditor@pcworld.com)
Monday, October 03, 2005, 10:00 PM (PST)
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Google rumor de jour (http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3553371): At a Tuesday press conference held in conjunction with Sun Microsystems, the company will announce some sort of partnership relating to bringing Sun's StarOffice suite to Google users. There is a Google/Sun event Tuesday morning at the Computer History Museum here in the Bay Area--so we'll known soon enough what's going on. (It might have nothing whatsoever to do with office software.) But I'm writing this Monday night, so I need to engage in random speculation.

First of all, Google and StarOffice are, in some ways, an odd fit. Google is at its most admirably Google-esque when it marches its own drummer, delivering useful tools that are anything but clones of existing products. Examples: Gmail, Google Maps, Google Earth, and, oh yeah, the Google Search engine itself.

By contrast, StarOffice (and OpenOffice.org, its free open-source variant) are mostly about doing things very much like the competition--Microsoft Office, natch--but doing a lot more affordably. I'm not saying that they don't boast their fare share of innovation--from support for OpenDocument file formats to the integrated PDF capabilities that Microsoft is still working on (http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000957.html). But right now, what makes them such compelling Microsoft alternatives is the impressive degree to which they look and work like Microsoft's products. Almost by definition, the more mundane and predictable these suites get, the better chance they have of catching on with the masses. And with OpenOffice.org already free, Google can't change the game merely by dropping the price of office apps to zero.

A Google Office that was basically a rebadged StarOffice, then, would be awfully ho-hum. A true Google Office is going to need to bring something new and useful to the table...probably a something (or multiple somethings) involving making information management easier and more effective. But what?

Google's answers to that question, should it choose to address it, would matter more than mine ever could, but herewith a few thoughts.

I'd love to see a Google Office that boasted...



http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000959.html

[Jeff]

And the winner is ...... Java and Java applications.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171219,00.html

[Wise Young]

I was just getting ready to be jealous that there is no version of OpenOffice for Mac OSX when I discovered a web site that gives instructions on how to build an OSX version of OpenOffice for Tiger. It is unfortunately very complicated to it yourself http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/build_680_X11.html but they have a stable release 1.1.x that is available for Mac OSX. The following site also has NeoOffice which is a carbon/java build of OpenOffice http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html

Wise.

[Zeus]

arstechnica.com (a great cross-platform website) has a good summary of the Google/Sun announcement:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051004-5386.html

It truly is yawn-worthy!

Chris.

[Wise Young]

arstechnica.com (a great cross-platform website) has a good summary of the Google/Sun announcement:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051004-5386.html

It truly is yawn-worthy!

Chris.

I started using NeoOffice/J which is the OSX version of Open Office. It is a great program. It does many things that Microsoft Office just is not very good at. For example, it has autotext which is a great feature. It looks up and completes all the words that you type. I think that this should be particularly good for people with spinal cord injury who are stick-typing. It directly opens Microsoft Word Documents and it has a built in database for referencing, a more convenient style sheet approach, and take advantage of all the OSX system tools. While it is still missing a few things like high resolution pictures (bit-mapped pictures on NeoOffice/J are still limited to 300 dpi), I believe that it is a better program that Microsoft Word. I am amazed.

Google has a long history of doing things differently from others and they have the money to make a commercial java-based OpenOffice that is truly multiplatform. More important, they may be able to incorporate the idea of gmail into OpenOffice, i.e. allowing people to be able to do all their wordprocessing on internet. Imagine if you had at your fingertips everything that you have ever written in a Google searchable database. The computer would bring up the most relevant passages, sorted in order of relevancy. This way, you would never have to retype anything again. You just select what you have written before and edit it.

Let your imagination run wilder. Imagine what would happen if google were to do a context-based search for the words or phrases that you type and present a list of relevant web sites that you can look at while you are wordprocessing. This is really not very difficult for Google to implement. They can create personal search patterns based on what you choose to look at and hone the search further.

I have been hankering for a wordprocessor that would automatically convert to html with all the correct formatting and allow me to put the documents directly on the web. A lot of programs are already doing this for blogging but none have really gotten it exactly right and with the correct formatting. It still takes time and effort to port the file to the right place and making sure that what-you-see-is-what-you-get on the web site. Imagine this happening in real-time in a separate window as you type and you can update the web site just by editing the document on your computer or on Google's database.

Finally, Microsoft has been notorious in changing the way their programs create documents so that previous versions of Word, for example, do not display files created by newer versions properly. I have long suspected that they do this in order to poke users into upgrading to new versions of Office. If OpenOffice were to standardize the file format of Word and Microsoft Office does not adhere to that standard, people would start migrating to the application that is the most consistent. Combined with the features above, I believe the OpenOffice will eventually supplant Microsoft as the world's provider of wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentation, and email, and database programs.

Wise.

[Zeus]

Combined with the features above, I believe the OpenOffice will eventually supplant Microsoft as the world's provider of wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentation, and email, and database programs.
Wise,

If only this were true! Unfortunately, I expect to be walking before OpenOffice takes off. :D I have never run OO, but the reviews I've read have always noted it is still buggier than MS's offering and cannot guarantee complete compatibility. I think this second issue is a deal-breaker.

It's hard to underestimate how much traction MS has in the market. Working in one of Australia's largest law firms for four years made me realise how much penetration Office has. There were around 300 lawyers and 400 admin staff in our Sydney office, and you can bet we had 700 MS Office licenses.

More to the point, virtually every law firms in Sydney/Australia was running Office 97! Law firms seem to skip every second version, so this year they were all upgrading to Office 2003. Documents represent a corporate law firm's entire revenue stream. Lawyers draft, period. Even litigators spend most of their time drafting. If OO represents even a small risk of losing data, it has a huge hurdle to jump.

There are numerous other issues. Home users are basically covered with MS Works and iWork. Corporate users have already invested heavily in MS Office. Who does OO target? College students and hobbyists?

It's true, Sun and Google could collaborate - but that's not what they announced. The basically just agreed to distribute each others software. Perhaps Google can make it so that OO installs like a regular Windows app, but how much will this widen OO's reach? Furthermore, what happens in 2007 when MS dumps Java completely in favour of .Net? Will enough users download java just for OO?

One of the ironies is that OS X now has one of the best java platforms ever - Apple has embedded java APIs deep into OS X - just as MS prepares to dump java. Will MS allow Sun's distribution of java to run as well as OS X, or will mysterious dialogue boxes complain that java is making Windows unstable? Does anyone remember DR-DOS?

Unfortunately, I think OO has a tough road ahead. I also think the idea of applications running completely over the internet is still a long way away. The net is just not as robust or secure as a LAN.

I don't expect MS Office to be king forever, but OO is not the answer. MS Office is in many ways more valuable to MS than Windows, and MS will fight to protect its crown jewel.

Chris.