Google adds StarOffice to Google Pack

Stan Beer
Monday, 13 August 2007 08:46

Business IT - Technology

In what may come as a surprise to many office productivity software users, Google has added Sun Microsystems' open source but not free office productivity suite Star Office to its Google Pack suite of free downloadable applications.

The move has intrigued some observers because Sun charges US$70 for a copy of Star Office, which is essentially an enhanced and more polished version of the free office productivity suite OpenOffice.org, which is also funded by Sun.

Both Star Office and OpenOffice.org are essentially Microsoft Office look-alikes which are largely file compatible with the Microsoft product. They both contain word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation and drawing software. They also adhere to the ODF open documents standard and can save files in the PDF format.

However, the one big deficiency of Star Office and OpenOffice.org is that there is no equivalent to Microsoft's Outlook email and groupware client

Other applications in Google Pack, such as Skype, RealPlayer and Adobe Reader can all be obtained for free elsewhere, so most would have expected that Google Pack would include the free OpenOffice.org rather than Star Office.

To date, no official announcement has been made explaining how Google is able to offer Star Office for free. The most likely explanation is that Sun, faced with negligible Star Office sales, has struck a deal with Google in order to get its software into the marketplace in order to build support revenues.