This represents neither the
beginning, nor the end of the competition between the two giant and powerful
tech companies. Microsoft and Google are smart business competitors; they seem
to know when to join forces and when to strike one against each other using
important partnerships, emergent ideas and new services.
So, although Google has recently
joined Microsoft (and other companies) in forming a coalition for pressing the
Federal Communications Commission to permit the vacant airwaves spectrum to be
available for different new wireless services, Google has also just started to
implement a decision for attacking Microsoft’s popular Office suite.
Although
Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. had theoretically partnered about two
years ago, it has been only over this weekend that Google has started to
silently include Sun’s StarOffice suite in the free download Google Pack. By
offering Sun’s word processing (and more) software suite, Google is trying to
attack Microsoft’s popular Office software, in its efforts of expanding beyond
the major field of web searching and control.
Google’s other software weapons
for challenging Microsoft’s supremacy include also the No. 1 web browser
Firefox and RealNetworks’s RealPlayer. StarOffice, Firefox and RealPlayer
challenge Microsoft’s homologue popular products Office, Internet Explorer and
Media Player respectively.
On the other hand, in the latest partnership, Google
is also giving an important helping hand to Sun Microsystems, which is in a
continual struggle to obtain profitability.
So, what will Microsoft do next?
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