The fight for your Office loyalty
by MATHEW INGRAM
06.09.2006

When Google announced a partnership with Sun Microsystems last fall, many people expected the search giant and the computer maker to launch a Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office. After all, Sun had a product called StarOffice, and Google had the bandwidth and the massive server "farms" to host any type of Web-based application.

In the end, the two merely announced a marketing effort involving the Google toolbar, and Google co-founder and gazillionaire Sergey Brin pooh-poohed the idea of a Web-based Office. "We don't have any plans" for such a thing, he said. A couple of months ago, Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt even said that "Office is not the business we're in."

Despite those dismissals, it looks an awful lot like Google is putting together a Web-based Office suite.– [Read More]