The fevered speculation about a possible Google and Sun effort to make a hosted version of OpenOffice available should now come to an end. Finally, the two tech companies have come out and stomped on the hysteria about a hosted “Google Office” package.
Discuss Google’s lastest relevation and other topics at WebProWorld.
An eWeek.com article quoted sources close to the collaboration efforts as saying the speculation is way off base.
Ever since the “press conference” earlier this month, where the two companies announced they planned to collaborate on some projects and make the Google Toolbar an available option when downloading the Java runtime environment, observers have been desperately trying to read more into the event.
The leading rumor by far has been the Google Office one. That one claimed Google would make a hosted version of the productivity suite available online. Further speculation figured this would be the end of Microsoft, validate Sun’s “the network is the computer” tagline, and leave everyone’s breath minty fresh (ok, maybe not that last part).
eWeek.com cited this statement from their shadowy source:
“A hosted desktop productivity offering has not been well-received when it has been tried in the past, and those have been beset with problems, including a lack of network bandwidth and speed,” said one source.
“There are also currently quite a number of existing user options, from Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works to Corel’s WordPerfect Office, Sun’s StarOffice and the free OpenOffice.org, so what benefit would a hosted offering bring?”
Google does plan to help promote OpenOffice, as well as enhance Sun technologies. In what ways isn’t known, and the press conference did nothing to suggest what they might be. Hence the rampant and hysterical guesswork about Google Office.
As far as enhancement goes, maybe it’s just Google tools in play. Sun could ship workstations with tools like Google’s Desktop 2 or Talk pre-installed, and maybe every purchaser would get a Gmail invite if they didn’t have a Gmail account already.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
