Google’s partnership with Sun Microsystems isn’t about what it is, but about what it could turn out to be.
“Sun and Google set the stage for something that is developing over time,” summarised Jean Bozman, research vice president with analyst firm IDC.
Chief executive Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems took the stage on Tuesday in California together with Google chief Eric Schmidt to announce a partnership between the two companies. Sun in the coming weeks will start bundling the Google Toolbar with its Java Runtime Environment on Java.com.
The Google Toolbar adds a menu bar to a web browser that not only allows users to search the web, but also offers services including translations and spell checking. With 20 million monthly downloads for Sun’s JRE, the number Google expects the number of toolbar deployments to drastically increase.
Google will pay Sun for the bundled downloads.
But both companies hinted that the toolbar bundling is merely the beginning of a partnership that could further develop over time, but were extremely fussy on the details.
Bundling the two products increases the appeal not only of the Google Toolbar, but also of Sun’s JRE. As Java becomes ubiquitous, this allows software developers to take the language for granted and start creating more applications for the platform.
“Once you get in to this Java layer, you can have any number of operating systems,” Bozman told vnunet.com. “The next step is to start offering applications as a service,” she predicted.
It would be logical move for Google to start offering a hosted version of the OpenOffice productivity suite. Some analysts had expected the search provider to announce such a product on Tuesday, but a press release that the two companies sent out only mentioned that Google would “explore opportunities” to promote OpenOffice.
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt at the event ducked a question about his plans for the productivity suite. “We will work to make the distribution of [OpenOffice] become broader. We are not announcing specifics,” he said.
Ray Valdes, research director for internet platforms and web services with analyst firm Gartner too sees OpenOffice as a major opportunity for the collaboration. He cautioned however to read too much into the announcement.
“This is one of [Google’s] many initiatives. You can view it as a pragmatic experiment. If it doesn’t work, that’s not a problem for Google at all. If it does work, it will result in significant benefits. Google can afford to try out these experiments,” Valdes told vnunet.com.
The search engine has build a massive, worldwide cluster of servers and is now seeking to use that for new applications. In the case of the Gmail email service for instance, Google proved that a hosted email provider could completely replace a desktop email client by offering large amounts of storage capacity, Valdes pointed out.
“They are leveraging their competitive strength in servers by exploring variations of what can be done on the client side.”
Sun is the real beneficiary in the partnership, Valdes argued, as partnering with one of today’s most esteemed internet companies gives the battered server vendor credibility.
“Sun is in a bit of a slump and could use a little push in the back. This helps them move along.”
IDC’s Bozman agrees that the Google partnership could benefit Sun’s image.
During the dotcom boom, the server vendor rode the top of the internet wave, and crashed with it. While the company remains a large player in the market for enterprise servers, its battered image and the rise of Linux and Windows on the server has pushed Sun somewhat to the back.
“A lot of people aren’t aware that Sun is behind a lot of things on the internet today,” Bozman said.
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