This is a slogan SUN Microsystems has been touting for years and years. The promise of a world full of thin clients and powerful servers, with all computing being done over the network.
This, quite obviously, has never really come to fruition. Perhaps until now?
This week Google and Sun announced a partnership, with intial plans centered around Sun’s OpenOffice suite. Could Google offer this under an ASP model to all users of desktop office software? They certainly have the network infrastructure, and the reputation. Google already offers each user of its gmail service over 2GB of free storage. Offering an office suite and document storage solution wouldn’t be much of a stretch.
Will Google still try to follow an advertising-based model (scanning the content of documents you are creating, and displaying relevant ads), or could it move into a paid subscription model?
Note that Microsoft already has versions of its Office software that run over the web.
Could *this* be what kills Microsoft? Probably not in the near future, but it’s certain to cause some serious bodily injury.
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