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Google & Sun Planning Web Office

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i'll-believe-it-when-i-see-it dept.

astrab writes "According to this post at Dirson's blog, Google and Sun Microsystems are to announce a new and kick-ass webtool: an Office Suite based on Sun's OpenOffice and accesible with your browser. Today at 10:30h (Pacific Time) two companies are holding a conference with more details, but Jonathan Schwartz (President of Sun Microsystems) claimed on Saturday on this post of his blog that "the world is about to change this week", predicting new ways to access software."

9 of 751 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Google Conquers all by digThisXL · · Score: 5, Informative

    Direct link to press conference site live at 1:30pm EST

  2. Re:Wow by KingSkippus · · Score: 4, Informative

    They may be developing an ulcer, but as we established in the previous front page article, it would be due to H. Pylori, not stress...

    Nevertheless, I agree. OpenOffice for the Web? Brilliant!

  3. How is this new? by CarlHall · · Score: 3, Informative

    Lotus had this worked out in the late 90's with a product called eSuite (think Lotus SmartSuite written in Java for a thin client). eSuite was profitable but didn't make enough money for IBM after the assimilation so it was dropped as a product line.

  4. StarPortal by martinicus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sun have had this technology for 5 years...it was called StarPortal, and then Sun One Web Top as Sun's marketing people renamed it to their latest buzzword compliant version. I bet the new version will be something like 'JWS' - Java Web System.

    It is essentially a Java encapsulation of Star/Open Office accessible through a browser. Pretty cool stuff, but involved some hefty Java downloads (~100MB?) to get it started up. Once started up though, it was almost identical to using a native version of Star/Open Office.

    Marty

  5. Re:Google is officially evil by PortHaven · · Score: 3, Informative

    If I understand it correctly, Taiwan was where the "old" government of China that we were allied with during WWII relocated too.

  6. Sun is doing it... by JavaLord · · Score: 3, Informative

    What if, behind closed doors at Google they're working on an OS? An OS that's based on Linux, yet with the UI and ease-of-use similar to OSX

    Sun is working on project looking glass Which is linux based, and the UI is similar (and maybe even a bit cooler) than osx. Check out the screenshots

  7. WOW..Tremendous Letdown! by MEGAGatchaman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Meh.. All that conjecture and just another corporate alliance. http://www.sun.com/2005-1004/feature/index.html Wake me up when Steve Jobs et al, join the mega-collective also.. G~

  8. Well, that was a HUGE letdown by artemis67 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was a little late to the webcast, but the gist is that Google and Sun are in the beginning stages of forming a partnership that begins with something about Java integration in the Google Toolbar (didn't catch all of that) and Google buying a lot of Sun servers. Whatever.

    In the Q&A session, Eric Schmidt says that they will *assist* in the distribution of OpenOffice (whatever that menas), but that they are *not* announcing a new product (i.e., Google Office).

    I think that the blog community got way, way ahead of this story.

  9. Nothing To See Here by fupeg · · Score: 3, Informative

    Turns out it's just a distribution deal. Downloading the Java JRE will give users the option to also download the Google toolbar. Similarly, the Google toolbar will eventually give users the option to download OpenOffice. There was some hintint at future collaborations between the two companies, but that's it for now.