Google gives away Sun's StarOffice software; Redmond is shaking in its boots.

Reuse all paper napkins; Gates institutes economy moves at Microsoft HQ.

If you can trust the Wall Street Journal, Google Inc. has begun distributing Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice software, a boost to the computer maker's quest to popularize the product and an electronic document format not controlled by Microsoft Corp.

Under the arrangement -- one element of an alliance announced in 2005 -- the Web search giant is offering free downloads of the Sun software as part of Google Pack, a set of products that Google selects and distributes through its Web site.

Rich Green, Sun's EVP in charge of software, said Google is paying Sun to distribute StarOffice, but declined to specify how much. Sun ordinarily charges $79 for StarOffice, for a version that comes with technical support and free updates.

Google's move elevates a battle over rival formats used to encode documents like spreadsheets and word-processing files that are created in suites of programs, such as StarOffice and Microsoft Office. The combatants include Microsoft and a group called the OpenDocument Format Alliance, whose members include Sun, Google and International Business Machines Corp.

Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., in 1999 purchased a company that developed StarOffice -- which competed with Microsoft's Office suite of products by offering a word processor, a spreadsheet, presentation software and electronic-mail and calendar programs. Over the years, Sun has enhanced its suite, and contributed to an open-source version of the product -- known by the Web address OpenOffice.org -- for free downloading.

The products, besides reading and writing the file formats generated by such Microsoft Office components as Word and Excel, also can support a file format called OpenDocument. Some legislatures and government agencies, in the U.S. and abroad, have been considering moves to standardize on OpenDocument because they are worried about their documents being stored in a fashion that might always require payments to Microsoft.

Sun estimates more than 100 million copies of OpenOffice.org have been downloaded. It hasn't given sales data about StarOffice.

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page94?oid=154235&sn=Detail