Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Google and Sun - an anti-climax
Bloggers - and some news websites - were going mad with speculation, even suggesting an AJAX based office suite, running through a browser. What they got in actual reality was the chance to download the Google Toolbar with the Java run time. Woo.
This means squat in reality. The Google Toolbar isn't particulary useful - Opera and Firefox already have Google search boxes, rendering the IE- and Firefox-only toolbar pretty useless. And Java is one of those things most PCs already come with, or you've already downloaded it and forgotten about it.
There were some vague suggestions in the press conference that Google and Sun would promote each other's software in the future - er, great! With no actual details this is meaningless.
Google are definitely doing... stuff. Big offices with lots of computer scientists in them. But they've not actually turned out anything really useful since GMail (although Google Maps is ok, providing you like distorted maps with few details and bizarre route plans). Oh yeah and they made Google Earth - which is rubbish compared to NASA's World Wind.
Maybe Google will do something exciting one day - but I'm not going to be holding my breath awaiting it.
This means squat in reality. The Google Toolbar isn't particulary useful - Opera and Firefox already have Google search boxes, rendering the IE- and Firefox-only toolbar pretty useless. And Java is one of those things most PCs already come with, or you've already downloaded it and forgotten about it.
There were some vague suggestions in the press conference that Google and Sun would promote each other's software in the future - er, great! With no actual details this is meaningless.
Google are definitely doing... stuff. Big offices with lots of computer scientists in them. But they've not actually turned out anything really useful since GMail (although Google Maps is ok, providing you like distorted maps with few details and bizarre route plans). Oh yeah and they made Google Earth - which is rubbish compared to NASA's World Wind.
Maybe Google will do something exciting one day - but I'm not going to be holding my breath awaiting it.
// posted by Dan @ 9:09 pm 
