As it looks now the alliance between Google and Sun Microsystems is a significant development for both companies and for the computing industry, but there seems to be a distinct difference in scope between the grand “multiyear, strategic agreement” the companies heralded at a press conference this Tuesday and the much narrower particulars they actually announced. One of the more tangible things that will happen: Sun will begin distributing the Google Toolbar with its Java software when people download the latter from Sun’s Web site. Google also committed to buying more Sun servers, though they did not reveal how many.
Other areas of partnership involve:
• Google, already a member of the Java Community Process steering committee, will become more active.
• Sun and Google will engage in joint marketing activities as well as joint research and development.
• Pending agreement of project programmers, Sun will add a Google search bar to OpenOffice.org, an office software suite Sun turned into open-source software in 2000.
• Google will help Sun with OpenSolaris, its open-source version of the Solaris operating system.
• Sun will continue to buy ads through Google. And Google will help distribute OpenOffice.
The bottomline: Java competes with Microsoft’s .Net and Windows, OpenOffice competes with Microsoft Office, Solaris competes with Windows, and the Google Toolbar provides access to Google online services that compete with Microsoft’s MSN.
So it just seems like Sun and Google are looking to compete against Microsoft.
In that light the whole Steve Ballmer chair-throwing incident (“I’m going to f***ing kill Google”) seems a bit more funny.