Google Pack Adds StarOffice

derrida writes The GoogleOS Blog has the news that Google Pack, their collection of applications, now includes StarOffice. 'It will be interesting to see why Google didn't choose to include OpenOffice.org, the primary difference between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being that StarOffice includes some proprietary components like clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration.'"

Ask That Question Again

From the summary...

"StarOffice includes...tools for Microsoft Office migration"

I think that they suspect that they can wean people off some of the Office stuff rather than just forcing them to go cold turkey.

Re:Ask That Question Again

Or perhaps they're planning on some future integration between Star Office and Google Docs (Star Office using Google Docs as a backend online storage option with on-the-go editing and collaboration features over and above Star Office's default set come to mind...).

Obvious

StarOffice includes some proprietary components like clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration.

I'd say they just answered their own question. Google wants to court MS Office users. Is this a surprise in any way?

The reason? Who cares!

They sure have their reasons. As a company, I'm sure Google can see above stupid ideological reasons (Open vs Close). Many people forget that Google is a company and profit IS their number one goal. So they should not be discarding the best of 2 products just because there are some propietary components....

Purist may puke by just thinking about this, but sane persons would just forget funny ideals and get the work done by chosing the tool that fits better for this case.

$69.95 U.S.

Did I miss something? I allways thoght that StarOffice is a commertial product - One you actualy pay for - $69.95 U.S to be precise.

So how does google do it then?

Martin

Re:$69.95 U.S.

Actually, its a free product in Solaris x86/SPARC - as for Windows, ever thought that *maybe* Sun approached Google and will use that as a way to get people to atleast *try* StarOffice 8 - then if they want support and so forth, to pay for it? Its all about getting the Sun name and brand out there, making the name known by non-technical people; making it more accessible rather than it being viewed as the domain of the purely UNIX geeks.

For me, I hope Indiana/Sun hook up with Google and use the Google hype, and integration with Google and Indiana to push it further out there as an alternative to Windows.

Re:$69.95 U.S.

Did I miss something? I allways thoght that StarOffice is a commertial product - One you actualy pay for - $69.95 U.S to be precise.

So how does google do it then?

I present two possibilities for your consideration:

1. Google made a deal with Sun for promotional purposes. I doubt they were selling many copies to begin with but might make good advertising for the Sun brand.
2. They pirated it using BitTorrent and are now illegally redistributing it.

I'll let you decide which one is more likely. ;)

People don't want choices

I'm going to give the summary the benefit of the doubt and assume the question was intended as why they don't include both OO.org and StarOffice.

The answer, of course, is that people don't want choices. Be happy that Joe Schmoe might even consider installing some weird program that's not made by Microsoft, don't expect him to decide whether he wants OpenOffice.org ("What is that, some website?") or StarOffice.

Google chose what they thought would be most useful to most technically-disinclined people.

Re:People don't want choices

OpenOffice.org ("What is that, some website?")

duh! every Joe Schmoe knows websites ends in .com

Staroffice without Linux...

My previous hospital (a very large tertiary-care facility) made the switch from Microsoft Office to Staroffice in late 2005. I had a decidedly mixed experience.

At first, I thought it was the coolest thing around -- can use opendocument formats and pdf. Unfortunately, the administration set them up on Windows 2000 workstations instead of switching to Linux. After several weeks of use, for the majority of tasks there was *no* difference (typing memos / patient letters, simple spreadsheet stuff.)

However, for anything more advanced (pivot tables) I found myself relearning stuff (StarOffice calls it a DataPilot). This wasn't too bad.

My biggest gripe was the small incompatibilities between .ppt and ooimpress; when presenting to an audience of hundreds you can't all of a sudden have text flowing off the slide or the .bmp come up black. If I wanted to share something (most everybody else still runs Powerpoint) I had to doublecheck the whole thing prior to doing the slideshow. There were also many small incompatibilites with Excel importing.

Openoffice / Staroffice is also definitively slower than Microsoft Office on startup and for most tasks I used. After awhile most doc's / staff members griped, "I am just saving the hospital money that I would never have seen anyway, why do I have a headache using this generic stuff when we could just have the real thing?"

Don't get me wrong; I use Linux exclusively at home (except for one WinXP box for VPN to work through a Juniper client that is a pain under Linux). I use OpenOffice at home.

However, for the enterprise the average user doesn't care that the IT department will save a few hundred thousand dollars a year -- they just want what is better or faster, or lacking that, what they already know how to use. The average user also doesn't care about the open source philosophy that you and I do.

The hospital still uses Staroffice (at least when I left) and you could request a workstation to be equipped with Microsoft Office if needed. I wish that the hospital had gone with Linux workstations, with Citrix / virtualization of apps that are Windows only, which would have given the clear benefits of Linux (stability, no spyware installed, etc.) with Staroffice.

The short story is - Staroffice in itself was slower and (from the average user's perspective) not as good as Microsoft Office, the current standard, and was perceived as an inferior product. I *really* think that had this change been bundled with a switch to Linux on the desktop, which would have enhanced the user experience (no more popups / junkware slowing down the system) it would have been a great thing; but by itself it was not that useful. Again, just one user's experience, but this was a large corporation with thousands of workstations.

  - Anybody else have similar experience with ditching Microsoft halfway in the corporate setting?

Re:Staroffice without Linux...

I took a small organisation to Linux and OpenOffice. The secretary/admin had only ever used MS Office previously. It was acceptable. There was a clear reason: money was very tight indeed. This certainly helped, it wasn't just ideology, there was a legitimate motivation rooted in the organisation's values of limiting overhead spend. There was a certain amount of confusion about small details of different operation of spreadsheets. The issue is, they are very similar but not quite identical. Most of the things she was used to worked about the same however - particularly filtering. However, pivot tables/data pilot turned out to be very hard to get used to. Mailing list label generation in Writer was another difficult point. I am terrible at this stuff myself and found it quite hard to teach. Well, hard to learn first.

Linux by contrast, the OS, turned out to be easy for everyone. It was indeed very stable. It turned out to supply lots of other free specialist software that we needed, and the people who needed it, not having run any proprietary equivalents in the past, just learned the new stuff and quite liked it. We created a couple of accounts for different people who work on different days, and they liked having the freedom to arrange their stuff how they liked.

Multiple desktops are one of the surprising things in Linux for new users. You must always teach them carefully and show people how to use them, and once they get used to them, they are something that is used all the time. What they really like is being able to leave one bit of work exactly as it was, move over to another workspace, do something else, and come back to exactly what you left as you left it. If you do move people to Linux, don't neglect to teach this. They will really come to appreciate it.

The big deal with calc turned out to be not the differences, which were a small irritation, but spreadsheets themselves. To get what we needed done, we ended up having to use array formulae. If you do this you will find that the average intelligent and computer literate person, even one who has worked quite a bit with spreadsheets, simply stops here. So we ended up with a spreadsheet that had a sort of mental 'off limits' tag on one of its worksheets. This works, I don't understand what it does, I don't want to know, if it goes wrong I will call up x and have him fix it. But this was a function of spreadsheets and arrays, not the way OO handles them.

There was a sort of side effect for our own admin. She left us, but before she went I watched a couple of other part timers being taught how to use the system, and the general account was, its a bit different, this is how it works, when you get used to it, its fine. But there was a definite increase in confidence that had come from mastering some new stuff, which at first had seemed rather forbidding, but had turned out to be adaptable to need.

If you do this, you have to understand you are asking people to do something unknown and a bit frightening, and absurd as it seems, something they really do not know whether they can do. I got the feedback a couple of times that 'I was so nervous about this, but I've actually learned it better than I thought I would'. You have to very much take the line that it just takes a bit of time, let them make mistakes, be instantly available when they need help, never get impatient. Pick the right time to explain just the right amount of what lies behind things. If you get them through the first few steps, the increased confidence will take them the rest of the way.

One of the most reassuring things you can say to people as they start is: you cannot do any damage to the system. Explain that they are signed on as a user, there's a backup of all the data, and nothing they do is going to damage anything. This is enormously reassuring.

All in all I would say, go for it. If you focus on the needs of the users and helping them, there's no reason it won't succeed.

It makes a huge difference...

...my coworkers refused to switch to OpenOffice, even though it was completely free. The dealbreaker? lack of clip-art, templates, etc. It's more likely than you think. Most of us might not care about silly things like that, but most people that I've run into tend to rely heavily on clip-art and templates.

OH NOES!

Google includes more featureful equivalent of software package in download pack.

Well I, for one, have just pissed myself in fear.

StarOffice is blog aware

I am guessing that Google plans on using the Star Office blogging add-on to bridge the gap between desktop app and web-app.

Imagine writing a document and telling it to save to your Google account online and then being able to work with it remotely via Google Docs and blogger (also owned by Google).

Then again, maybe Sun has an aqua-native Mac OS X port that they have been secretly working on? That would make it much more attractive too.

Eric Schmidt is no dope. Seeing a Google-Sun collaboration does make me think of all of the old Apple-Sun rumors. And, Schmidt is on the Apple Board.

Basically, Star Office is OpenOffice.org + extras. So, if he could make a deal to distribute that for free, why bother with Star Office - "extras" at all?

StarOffice == ODF == Good

I don't really worry too much about it not being OpenOffice... It is still Google trying to get people to migrate from MSOffice... And StarOffice is yet another ODF thing, so google seems to be including tools for migration from MSOffice formats to ODF, and I see that as a good thing.

Both OpenOffice and StarOffice are equally bloated thanks to Sun anyways...

But still can only install to C: drive...

I would love to try this out, but as my tiny, high-rpm C: drive is dedicated to my bloated, monopolistic OS, there is no room for anything else. When, oh WHEN will the Google Gods add a path option in the advanced options?

Argh!

the primary difference between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being that StarOffice includes some proprietary components like clip-art graphics ...

Who else read that as Clippy?

Depends on usage, entirely

I've tried using OpenOffice. I use it for school. But when someone sends me a Word 2007 document, what do I do? Last I had checked (a few months ago, I admit), there was no way for OO to open a Word 2007 file.

Or, try powerpoint. OO's presenter or whatever isn't bad, but PowerPoint ... well, easily looks far more professional.

And frankly, I think a lot of businesses would rather pay for Office because it allows them to have professional looking documents much quicker (i.e., templates and such).

Whether or not "we" need it is irrelevant; Microsoft has succeeded in producing and marketing software that is somewhat easy and efficient to use for.. well, offices. Until Linux/OSS productivity packs like OpenOffice can achieve the same, and well, many people will still prefer Microsoft Office.

And it's not just because it's what they are used to. People are also used to their old cars, but a lot of them want new ones :) Especially if their old one had random problems all the time... but if the new one was really hard to figure out, they might just rather have the old one with random problems. Shoot, I just used a car analogy.

Um, an *interesting* question?

"It will be interesting to see why Google didn't choose to include OpenOffice.org ... clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration." My guess is that they chose StarOffice because it has clip-art graphics, fonts, templates, and tools for MS Office migration. You know, glaringly trivial shit for most users.

It Will Be Interesting?

No it won't. It's trivial at best, especially since the answer came with the question: more good stuff. It's an obvious choice that makes the question alone lame, and with the answer attached ridiculous.

Slow news day?

I hate the google pack

I hate to say this, but I can't stand the google pack. I hate the fact that it leaves an icon running in the system tray ALL THE TIME. I hate that it BOTHERS you all the time "ooo this update is out" "ooo you should add THIS feature". I think the idea is great. Put this in, install a bunch of good useful stuff in one go.

Along the same vein is the Google Toolbar, which I really like for people running MSIE, but I really HATE haveing the "GoogleUpdateNotifier" processing running ALL THE TIME whether MSIE and the google toolbar is showing or not. Guys, write code so it doesn't need to run ALL THE TIME (this means YOU, Apple and 'IPODUpdateServeice", I don't even OWN an ipod, and you won't let me disable this).

awesome

Awesome, hopefully this will spark more people into checking out Star Office and its cousin Open Office.

DAMN YOU!

How am I supposed to come up with a +5 Insightful about Open Office when it's already mentioned in the article title? THANKS A LOT!!

Feels pointless..

I always thought google was trying to get people use google docs and spreadsheets. Though limited in some ways, i thought it can only get better because they can add more features incrementally.

Scramble the words

StarOffice Pack Google Ads

Re:Isn't it obvious?

Either that or some kind of favour for a favour. And exactly what that involves I really don't want to know.

Jolyon

Re:Isn't it obvious?

'It will be interesting to see why Google didn't choose to include OpenOffice.org, the primary difference between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being that StarOffice includes some proprietary components like clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration.'

Ahem...isn't that enough? Tools for MS Office integration being a must_have these days and all....

Re:Isn't it obvious?

Or maybe they recognize that some PHBs won't go with "free", and StarOffice has the needed "we can get multiple licensed copies for a fee" thing going ...?

... and that google may want to encourage a more diverse ecosystem, with more vendors, as a couterweight to an either-or choice - MS-Office or OpenOffice?

What google did wasn't evil - they're supporting StarOffice, and this will help continue to develop the product. Competition is good, mkay? :-)

C'mon man!

I just so happen to disagree. Let's deal this one out, IRC style!

*Anonymous_Coward slaps Anonymous_Coward around a bit with a large trout

Re:Linus is right

What does that have to do with Google distributing StarOffice?

Re:Turns out to be uninteresting and irrelevant

At the moment there's no Google Pack for Mac. That link just takes you to their Mac software page where you can get Google Earth, SketchUp, and the rest of their Mac stuff. No super-secret Aqua version of StarOffice in sight.

Re:Turns out to be uninteresting and irrelevant

I don't understand what your issue with this is. The applications they distribute are compatible with Windows. It's somehow wrong for them to inform you of that fact?

Re:Isn't it obvious?

So what if they did? I'm not saying that they did...in-fact, I highly doubt it. But would it really matter? Consumers are getting a paid-for office suite for free. I don't care if Eric Schmidt and Jon Shwartz got together for a crazy orgy sex fest to put this deal in place, it still benefits consumers.

Re:why Google didn't choose to include OpenOffice.

More likely because it is better.

StarOffice 8 might have received considerably more QA testing that OpenOffice and has some value added content, but two years of bug fixes and enhancements say OpenOffice is better.

The situation is a bit like Netscape was with Mozilla. If I recall, Netscape 6 was based off Mozilla 0.7 or 0.8. But by the time it had been tested and released, Mozilla was already several versions beyond. As long as you were prepared to trade off stability, you were better off sticking with the open source version because it was usually faster and had more features.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

WTF?! How is this flamebait :S

Re:Google Docs?

a) Most people are used to having a "hard" desktop application for their office work. StarOffice is a "hard" application, as opposed to Google Docs' being a "soft" (web-based) app that requires a constant Internet connection to work
b) This is pure speculation, but some sort of GoogDocs and StarOffice fusion that keeps your GD documents synced locally for use with StarOffice, and giving StarOffice some of Google's collaboration features to compete with MS's SharePoint and Groove

Re:why Google didn't choose to include OpenOffice.

Speaking of freedom, where's the download for Linux?

Google Pack requires Windows XP or Vista

Get Google software for the Mac
www.google.com/mac

They still don't get it right.