Google's CPR

No that was not a typo. I am not talking about CPM but CPR. What you ask? Well, it looks like Google is focussed on spoiling Microsoft's money churning office business. How do they plan to do this? By giving CPR to Staroffice. This on top of the slew of productivity apps they are developing on their own. The take is that the web productivity suite they are creating is for very small businesses who want something quick and free while Staroffice is geared towards businesses which want a serious productivity suite that is as competitive as Microsoft's. Two years back when Eric Schmidt announced the partnership with Sun I was sure as hell that Staroffice would do what Firefox is doing to IE. But I am now mature enough to understand that not all that Google touches turns into gold. To Google's credit they have figured out that the Office business is huge and has enormous potential to grow. Traditionally Google's strength has always been the ability to be viral and build an ecosystem around their products. Office productivity suites are a logical way to virally attack the same consumer in the office. So while all this is fine and dandy the flaw so far has been that they have chosen the wrong horse to run the race. Staroffice has not made much headway against it's formidable rival. Having the blessings of Google is not going to help either of these two partners. Microsoft will continue to happily cash in their checks.

Disclaimer: I have been wrong before on such predictions :)