Sun shines on Google

Well, The Register had me built up today for a big joint press release from Sun and Google. So what a disappointment it was to read the actual announcement - that Sun would be (optionally) bundling Google's toolbar with the Java Runtime. Sorry, but I just find that gratuitous and pointless. It has nothing to do with Java, and it is unlikely to work in the browser I use (Opera). It it were a Java-based cross-browser toolbar, sure, that would be great. But I'm pretty sure that isn't the deal.

There some talk in the press release about other Sun/Google co-operation, possibly around OpenOffice and StarOffice. Now that is a more interesting story. Having a Google tool in OpenOffice/StarOffice to go along with the spelling and grammer tools would be interesting. That said, I think that Wikipedia and Wiktionary tools would be even more interesting, and extremely appropriate for an office suite.

There are also things that Google and Sun could do around integrating OpenOffice/StarOffice with desktop search, e-mail, and instant messaging (+ audio + video). So, I hope today's offering was just a first small baby step. There are far more interesting things that Sun and Google could be doing for us.