Google and Sun Shake Hands Over Google Toolbar

The long-awaited press conference, in which Google and Sun Microsystems were expected to detail their collaboration plan, finally "happened". Eric Schmidt, Google's current CEO, who has worked for Sun in the past, and Scott McNealy, Sun's CEO, had announced that the two companies share the same vision on the "network is a computer" concept.

Apart from the fact that Google Toolbar will be included in Java, the two companies haven't announced any other details. According to Sun's estimations, the Java software is being downloaded each month by 20 million persons. By including the Google Toolbar, the two companies hope the number of Google users will also increase; obviously, an increase in ad income is also expected.

As for the speculations related to a possible collaboration between Sun and Google on the Star Office project, an announcement many analysts were expecting to hear, the two directors didn't mention anything on the matter.

Schmidt and McNealy admitted though that there will be a collaboration regarding Open Office. The analysts considered that Google and Sun could announce a web service, based on Open Office, but, when questioned about the possibility, Schmidt only mentioned that there isn't any official announcement regarding this project.

If Open Office was distributed by Google, which has 80 million users per month, the open source office suite would become an important rival for MS Office.