As well as Google’s own Talk, Screensaver, Desktop, Toolbar and Picasa, the company will bundle Adobe Reader 7, Ad-Aware SE Personal, GalleryPlayer, Firefox, Norton AntiVirus 2005, RealPlayer, and Trillian in the Pack.
It is all free to download and install, though some of the software providers will get up-sell opportunities. Symantec’s Norton, for example, will come with six months of virus definitions, but users will have to pay to maintain it after that.
But there’s no OpenOffice there, and no Java Runtime Environment in the pack, despite the fact that Google and Sun partnered in October, with Sun promising to distribute Google Toolbar. At that time, the firms talked about exploring opportunities to promote OpenOffice.
There was no immediate answer to the question of why Google did not take this obvious opportunity to reciprocate. Spokespeople for both firms did not return requests for comment by press time. A Google statement referred to the pack as essential software.
It could be a question of download size. The OpenOffice download package weighs in at over 90MB, which would more than double the size of the Google Pack.
But the JRE only comes in at about 16MB. For comparison, the Google Pack contains almost 11MB of screensaver software. It also has two instant messaging clients, one of which weighs in at 9MB.
Despite the absence of anything from Sun, the bundle does appear to demonstrate that Google is taking a leaf from the Sun play-book – the old anything-but-Microsoft strategy.
As well as its own software, Google is distributing software from partners that compete directly with Microsoft and, reportedly, not getting any money for doing so.
We’ve heard from countless new computer owners that it can take days or weeks to install all the software they need to make their computer useful, was the official word from Google’s Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience at Google.
But most of the same functionality Google Pack offers is available gratis from Microsoft Windows. Media Player competes with RealPlayer, Messenger with RealPlayer, Windows Defender with Norton, and Ad-Aware and Internet Explorer with Firefox.
Microsoft doesn’t appear particularly scared. Bill Gates used a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show to pour scorn on Google, and more importantly on the company’s cheerleaders in the media and investment community.
The launch of Google Pack was merely the latest example of a scheduled announcement being blown out of all proportion days in advance. One rumor, among many others, had it that the company this time would launch a PC based on Linux.
I hear they’re coming out with a robot that will cook hamburgers, too. Let’s spread that rumor – there’s nothing they can’t do, Gates said.
