Initiative will entail a broad corporate relationship
Google and Sun Microsystems are expected to unveil a collaborative effort that will encompass multiple products from both companies, according to a Sun spokeswoman.
Sun issued a media advisory saying that the two companies will hold a press conference hosted by Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy and Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Representatives from the companies remain tight-lipped about what will be announced, but Jacki DeCoster, a Sun spokeswoman, noted that the partnership will be a ‘broad corporate relationship,’ similar to the one Sun struck with Microsoft last April, in which the companies will team up on several initiatives.
Google, the leader in Internet search, has been on somewhat of a tear in Silicon Valley and neighboring San Francisco in recent weeks.
A relationship between Google and Sun is not surprising, considering that Google manages a large, distributed infrastructure to maintain its search site, and Sun servers powered the infrastructure behind the networks of many of the large dot-coms before the bust wiped them out.
Schmidt, who was once chief executive of network software maker Novell Inc., also led the development of the Java programming language in 1996 at Santa Clara, California-based Sun Microsystems, where it was invented. Schmidt also helped to define Sun’s software strategy and served as the company’s chief technology officer.
Additionally, both Sun and Google share a common enemy — Microsoft. Industry sources have speculated that Google is interested in offering more applications, such as a Web-based office productivity suite, to compete with its rival in Redmond, Washington.
Details won’t emerge publicly until Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun CEO Scott McNealy take the stage at a news conference in Mountain View, Calif. But one strong possibility is a partnership that could help shift personal computing out of Microsoft’s domain and into Google’s.
The partners have complementary assets for such a task. Sun has the open-source OpenOffice.org software suite and its close relative, StarOffice. It has Java software, which is well suited for network-friendly applications that run on any Java-enabled PC.
As for Google, its products have become daily resources for a vast number of computer users, and it offers a growing suite of software. In addition, it has the ambition of becoming the company that supplies network-based applications.
Google already has a significant collection of software that is dependent on a network rather than being tied to an operating system. They include Gmail for e-mail, the Desktop Search Sidebar which offers customized news and information based on a computer user’s activity, Picasa for photo management and Google Earth for satellite-based maps and geographic information.
In addition, Google is an active Java user. Since 2004, it has been a member of the Java Community Process steering committee that governs the fate of the technology. Though Java has not caught on widely for running desktop software, it has long had the potential to undermine Microsoft’s strength by providing an alternative program foundation to Windows.
Other avenues for cooperation between the companies exist. Google’s data center could use Sun’s "Galaxy" line of AMD Opteron-based x86 servers and, though they are farther a field from Google’s current x86-based systems, its upcoming Niagara-based Sparc-Solaris machines that are geared for Web-oriented tasks.
Further, marking its biggest step into the wireless communications market to date, Google said it has proposed to provide free high-speed wireless Internet service across the city of San Francisco. The Web search company said it had responded to a request for information by San Francisco, which has a population of more than 700,000, to test local Internet services via Wi-Fi, the short-range wireless technology built into most new laptop computers.
Also, Mountain View, California-based Google said on Sept. 28 it would partner with U.S. space agency NASA on space research and would build a new campus at the agency’s research center in the heart of Silicon Valley.
A Sun spokesman confirmed the press conference, but declined to elaborate on the announcement. A Google spokesperson was not immediately available to comment.