Do you know about Google Updater?
There is a good chance you have it installed on your computer already
as it’s bundled with other Google products like the browser toolbar.
Well, in what seems to be an obvious attempt to steal even more users
away from Microsoft Office products, Google just added “StarOffice” to
the the list of available downloads that can be installed and updated
automatically through Google Pack. If you download it directly from
Sun, it will cost you around $70, however Google appears to be giving
it away for free — or at least there isn’t a nag screen or an obvious
way to upgrade to a full version.

Web applications like Google Docs are very useful in many
circumstances, but for power users who need, or prefer, a fat client to
do their work — there was no real choice but to keep using Microsoft
Office if they don’t know about this suite.

StarOffice, which includes their own version of Access, Excel, PowerPoint and Word, is developed by Sun — but Google has been throwing resources at it
since October, 2005. I am going to assume there is a plugin under
development that lets users create documents on their PC and
synchronize them with their online counterpart through Google Docs.
StarOffice already has hooks into Google’s search and desktop
capabilities.

It should be interesting to see if this move helps Sun get more
exposure for StarOffice. What do you think? Are you surprised Google
made this product available through the Google Updater? Will this
affect Microsoft in any way?

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