Sun and Google annouce partnership.
In the personal computer industry, the distributor (Microsoft) has legendarily had the power over what programming and software is distributed with the underlying Windows platform. By implication, they say that non-Windows products and programming are lower value, and have a higher hurdle to clear in earning a path to consumers – a barrier cleared only by value.
Two of the internet’s most valuable brands have clearly achieved that status: Java and Google. Could you imagine a PC that couldn’t access Java services? Or how about a browser that couldn’t get to Google? My view, either would be a tough sell. Other programming, such as Macromedia Flash, Firefox and OpenOffice are in the same league – along with services such as Yahoo.com, eBay, or AOL.com. The world of network services is enormously competitive, and it’s driving enormous innovation (and quite a few deals harkening back to the early days of the internet). Much of this next wave of innovation is referred to as Web 2.0 – the convergence of technology and services that underlie the Participation Age.
Now, the volume distribution of Java (there are hundreds of millions of runtimes out there), coupled with the extraordinary success of the standards supported by OpenOffice (most recently in Massaschusetts), is combined with one of the hottest network service providers, Google. Well, thats the theory anyway.
Unfortunately, the announcement itself conjures up memories of the dot-com days in its pointlessness: Sun will give users the opportunity to download the Google toolbar when they download the Sun Java virtual machine. That’s it, apart from more bubble-days rhetoric saying “the companies have agreed to explore opportunities to promote and enhance Sun technologies” like OpenOffice. Some people are scrambling to find the meat of the deal, but there really isn’t any there — Google doesn’t even think it’s big enough to warrant putting out their own press release. This seems like a ploy by Sun to try and gain some attention and good press by latching on to Google, when there’s not a lot of underlying substance — much like the recent Apple/Motorola collaboration.
Tweet This