October 05, 2005

Stephen O'Grady has some good insight on the Google-Sun partnership, Google/Sun: Overhyped or Undervalued?. He says two things that I really like. First,

So if one assumes that the participation in the JCP and the rumored hiring activity is done with a clear goal in mind, the question is what goal is that? From the Java side, I think the benefit to Google would be clear: just about every client side application they've developed to date has been Microsoft specific. The Google Toolbar was originally IE only, and both the Google Desktop and Google Talk are Windows only. This is in stark contrast to their thin-client offerings, which in general could care less what operating system you run on. Might Java be a bridge for those applications to other platforms? Could be.

On the surface, O'Grady's comment may seem ridiculous, but in light of Google's little invention called AJAX, the suggestion that Google could improve client-side Java seems plausible. Google did with Javascript what no one thought was possible, could they do the same with Java...probably.

Second,

The other interesting aspect of the deal that no one's talked about yet that I can see is one that's a bit outside my coverage: the hardware. After today, I'm really curious as to whether or not Google - the datacenter to end all datacenters - is looking into Sun for power reasons.

Everyone is so disappointed in the lack of Open Office news that they are overlooking Sun's marketing potential with a Google-hardware partnership. Sun has always prided themselves in industrial strength hardware. They are returning to their roots by hiring Andy Bechtolsheim and bragging about the features of their servers. Can you imagine the number of times Jonathan Schwartz will use Sun Fire X and Google in the same sentence if he can say that Google uses Sun hardware? That will speak volumes to existing and future Sun customers. If I was a Sun stock holder, forget Open Office, first tell me that Google has returned to Sun hardware.

Posted by rob at October 5, 2005 10:08 AM | TrackBack