Google and Sun Microsystems partner with OpenOffice
With the new challenging market, Microsoft may start to face a hard time convincing users to pay for software where rival companies are now releasing their version for free.
Most importantly the focus is on Microsoft Office, the bundled software comprising of Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Outlook. In different versions Visio and Publisher are also included.
Sun's OpenOffice packages Writer – rival to Microsoft Word, Impress – rival to PowerPoint, Calc – rival to Excel and Base – rival to Access. Other two applications include Draw – a vector drawing tool and Math – an equation formulating tool.
Microsoft generated $11 billion dollars last year solely on sales of MS Office. With firms such as Sun Microsystems offering free competing software simply puts the pressure on the world’s biggest software company - Microsoft.
By joining Sun, Google will allow users to download OpenOffice via the Google website and users downloading Sun’s java program will be given the option to download the Google toolbar.
"Working with Google will make our technologies more available more broadly, increase options for users, lower barriers and expand participation worldwide," said Sun’s CEO - Scott McNealy.
This way of publicising OpenOffice begins to give Google and Sun the opportunity to eat into Microsoft’s market share.
Will this partnership affect sales of MS Office, or will the usability and the still standing reputation of Microsoft's software draw users to carry on using Office?
A web cast of the join partnership between Google and Sun Microsystems can be viewed here
