The Times has a report toay about how Google is going to distribute OpenOffice from Sun Microsystems.
This ought, by rights, to be the definitive non-story. OpenOffice is essentially an alternative to Microsoft Office. It's free of charge and available by download. That hasn't changed. Microsoft Office costs hundreds per license. That hasn't changed.
So I can't help feeling that the real story is how a free-of-charge alternative to some relatively expensive-per-desk software isn't already ruling the world. It's true it doesn't look as shiny as the Microsoft offering but it does more or less what it's supposed to do, and it doesn't mind whether it's on a PC, Mac, Windows, Linux, whatever.
It may be inertia, it may be the old principle of no-one ever having been sacked for buying the market leader - personally I think it's more likely that people don't know there's an alternative for which they don't have to pay.
Did anyone in here know there was a free download that would replicate most of what Microsoft Office does? And why, if so, aren't you using it..?
