It should be no surprise that SUN would finally release StarOffice as a part of Google Pack. Obviously, Google must be paying Sun some whooping fee for the grand daddy of all “enterprise licenses.”
As for why Google didn’t put OpenOffice in Google Pack, even though SUN supports it, and it is basically the same application suite, my thought is it is a lot more tidy to deal with one licensing partner than all those “open source” idealists who gave away their talents to enhance the product. .
In the current arrangement SUN gets paid and Google gives away an offline suite to compliment the online tools thus integrating desktop and web interfaces (Google DOCS & Spreadsheets).
In terms of ROI Google will undoubtedly make a profit relative to the cost of licensing the StarOffice suite since it embedded the search toolbar in the interface which leads to all those search related ads.
It should be no surprise that SUN would finally release StarOffice as a part of Google Pack. Obviously, Google must be paying Sun some whooping fee for the grand daddy of all “enterprise licenses.”
As for why Google didn’t put OpenOffice in Google Pack, even though SUN supports it, and it is basically the same application suite, my thought is it is a lot more tidy to deal with one licensing partner than all those “open source” idealists who gave away their talents to enhance the product. .
In the current arrangement SUN gets paid and Google gives away an offline suite to compliment the online tools thus integrating desktop and web interfaces (Google DOCS & Spreadsheets).
In terms of ROI Google will undoubtedly make a profit relative to the cost of licensing the StarOffice suite since it embedded the search toolbar in the interface which leads to all those search related ads.