On October 4, Sun & Google announced a partnership, “ The World changes this week ,” where Sun will distribute the Google Toolbar and Google will distribute the Java runtime, as well as a combined partnership to promoting/distributing OpenOffice , an open source MS Office competing product.
Today, Lee Gomes of the WSJ (subscription required, or pickup one at the newsstand) has a piece on the first page in the Marketplace section, under the Portals sidebar commenting on this grouping… something that’s quite amusing to me WRT the announcement:
“… The actual event was a model for how well-known companies can make a major media event out of a nothingburner. All that is required are a few transactional-sounding but empty phrases, a couple of vague promises and implicit invocation of the Microsoft boogieman, all baked together as a ‘strategic relationship.’
You can tell the meagerness of Tuesday’s offerings by the highlight: Sun will offer the Google Toolbar Web search aid in some of it’s own software downloads…”
– Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal , Wednesday, October 12, 2005, Page B1