Google and Sun release StarOffice in Google Pack

The New York Times shouts "Google goes after Microsoft again" by distributing Sun's StarOffice for free in Google Pack. Mary Jo Foley says "At long last, it looks like Microsoft Office, with its 90+ percent market share,  may get some serious competition."  Dan Farber at ZDNet has a more balanced reaction saying "Over a decade, OpenOffice/StarOffice has not challenged Microsoft’s supremacy, and a free, unsupported version from Google won’t have much impact."

What has changed? Star Office has been around for 8 years and has gained no traction. Sun even made it available for free as open source in the form of OpenOffice. That was 7 years ago. Google will be distributing the same StarOffice that Sun now sells for $70, and OpenOffice distributes for free. Oh, BTW, StarOffice is a 200Mb download...or more depending on your OS.

Microsoft is not standing still. Microsoft Office 2007 is an amazingly powerful product. Microsoft Office is the gold standard for word processing (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), presentations (Powerpoint), and personal databases (Access). The applications work together seamlessly (XML) and the user interfaces are very similar and easy to use. Microsoft Word supports all the popular file formats including save as PDF, OpenXML, and even a plugin for ODF. The new Office 2007 User Interface presents all the features you need in a ribbon format, no more drop down menus.

Microsoft Works is another alternative. It is a fully functional office suite that has shipped on home edition personal computers for years. Works compares favorably with Google Docs or any of the new Web 2.0 office competitors. Microsoft is now experimenting with a free (advertising supported) version of Microsoft Works.

Software + Services - Microsoft has been working hard to leverage the best of client software and web based services into one seamless user experience. Users want to take advantage of the computing power on the desktop for compute intensive tasks like creating large documents and spreadsheets, multimedia presentations, and video editing. There are other times when you want a more lightweight, collaborative, and interactive environment where a web browser is a better choice. Why not create on the desktop and share on the web? Why not collaborate and edit documents on the web and save the changes back to your desktop? Creating a great user experience that is intuitive yet powerful, available online and offline, and synchronized across all domains, is the goal of Software + Services. There is lots of work left to do, but that is the direction.

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Comments

[Edwin Khodabakchian]

Hi Don,
I love your blog and learn a lot from it so I do not mean to be disrespectful. I think that Microsoft should very seriously consider the fact that it is loosing a lot of steam (not in terms of dollar amounts because you still hold a lot of customers prisoners but it terms of early adopters) and that at some point, all the little punches that Sun, Google, Apple, Adobe and open source are giving are going to reach a tipping point, a transition from early adopters to more mainstream users: I think that of all the products you mentioned, Excel is probably the only one which has still some protection left. (And putting Microsoft Works out there won't really help, AOL tried the same thing with Compuserve and look at where they are).
Edwin

[Steve Lacey]

Just a minor observation - you only mention cost (free) when talking about Works.

The cost of Office is quite astounding when you don't have access to the company store anymore :-)

[Don Dodge]

Edwin, Microsoft takes all competition seriously. Microsoft is experimenting with several different approaches to serve different segments of the market.

I guess my reaction was aimed at the hypsters who proclaim anything Google does as new, exciting, and a direct threat to Microsoft.

We all love the underdog...but we should wait for some evidence of success before declaring them The Next Big Thing.

Steve, Cost is just one factor in the value decision. That is why I don't think dropping the cost of StarOffice from $70 to zero will make that much difference. It is already available for free as OpenOffice.

Microsoft Office is already installed from the factory with most business class computers. Ala carte purchases and upgrades are pretty reasonable too, but certainly not the same as free. When you think about the hundreds of millions spent on development of Office it is a real bargain.

[valleyblogzine]

Great post Don. My thoughts on this topic are very similar
http://valleyblogzine.blogspot.com/2007/08/googles-cpr.html

[Anthony Kuhn]

A well grounded rebuttal to the hype surrounding any and all things Google.com. Time will tell if StarOffice gets any traction with its free price and Mountian View, California backing. The greatest of trees grows from the smallest of seeds!
I cross-posted on your piece to http://blog.innovators-network.org
The Innovators Network is a non-profit dedicated to bringing technology to startups, small businesses, non-profits, venture capitalists and intellectual property experts. Please visit us and help grown our community!

Best wishes for continued success,

Anthony Kuhn
Innovators Network

[Walter Lounsbery]

Don,

Thanks for a great blog that gets into "controversial" areas for Microsoft on occasion. Your points about StarOffice are good. I can remember when Sun decided that their business was all about competing with Microsoft instead of expanding their real customer base. Someday the stupid thin client idea of theirs will finally die ;-)

But I don't think for one moment that Google is stupid. Outlook is no longer the shining example for email, so of course it didn't make your list of Office greatness. We know what happened to that gold turkey, er, standard.