Well, it’s all a bit vague at the moment, with no links to anything substantial – but if the Inquirer and the Brisbane Courier Mail (talk about bizzare places to get a scoop!) are to be believed, then the Sun Google partnership announced earlier this week is bigger than they initially admitted…

According to the Inquirer:

GOOGLE has confirmed that it will launch free spreadsheet and word-processing software online and take on Microsoft in one of its biggest markets.
Under the deal, Google will allow web users to access Sun’s OpenOffice from a toolbar.

The Courier Mail describes it thus:

Search engine Google has declared war on Microsoft, announcing plans to launch free spreadsheet and word-processing software online.

It then goes on to mention the details of the original deal:

Google has joined forces with US-based technology giant Sun Microsystems to allow web users to access Sun’s OpenOffice from any personal computer.
Sun will offer Google’s search toolbar with downloads of its free Java software, which now powers more than 2.5 billion gadgets around the globe, including 700 million PCs.

but there’s no links to < quote > yesterday’s announcement < /quote > to be found in the article…… suffice to say, I remain sceptical – but hopeful…..

Just imagine, online office – storage integrated with your GMail account, throw in the option to privately archive your gtalk conversations into that said-same storage, and then make it all searchable (voice recognition anyone?) – superb…. but the privacy issues need to be addressed before people will really go for it I suspect.