Sun Offers StarOffice for Free

August 16, 2007: After announcing a partnership some two years back, Sun and Google have finally made some moves with Sun announcing that its StarOffice software suite is now being offered as part of Google’s software download service.

Based on the popular open source office suite OpenOffice.org, StarOffice supports both the OpenDocument and Microsoft Office formats and usually costs around AU$85 to download. The Google version will be offered free alongside the likes of Firefox and Realplayer on its download service, however, it will come sans support from Sun.

Aside from its new distribution option, Sun also announced that it has added web search functionality to all StarOffice products, enabling online searches to be conducted from within the applications.

Overall the deal looks to be a minor coup for Google in its battle against Microsoft, considering the addition of StarOffice gives it a solid and popular suite of office applications suitable for enterprises to compliment its rapidly expanding range of productivity, security and multimedia software and services.

The addition will also no doubt see support for the OpenDocument increase further, with StarOffice gaining a much broader audience via Google’s software pack – another blow against Microsoft’s Open XML format which was earlier this week denied fast track status in its bid to become an ISO standard.

“Using ODF within StarOffice allows for interoperability and choice among those seeking free and open standards-based office productivity applications,” said Rich Green, executive vice-president of Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Green adds that OpenOffice.org adoption is growing at nearly three million downloads a month, with StarOffice boasting 100 million downloads to date the productivity software battle is certainly heating up.

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