Dan Farber has quoted Google co-founder Sergey Brin, at Web 2.0 conference, as saying that Google and Sun want to do new and better things than the office package and more.


Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a guest appearance at the Web 2.0 conference. Dan Farber has reported in the Zdnet blog, that someone from the audience asked Brin about when a ‘Google Office’, a web-based productivity suite, would appear.

To this question Sergey Brin responded by saying, “I don’t really think that the thing is to take a previous generation of technology and port them directly, and say can we do the minicomuter on the Web on AJAX makes sense.

I’m not saying that’s what [Microsoft] Office is, I’m just saying that I think the Web and Web 2.0, if that’s what you want to call it, gives you the opportunity to do new and better things than the Office package and more. We don’t have any plans [to do an office suite]”.

According to Sergey Brin, there are good Web-based applications popping up and that Google would do its thing, and that working with documents will become a lot more convenient than it is today.

Dan Farber has also reported the interaction of the audience with Jonathan Schwartz, president and CEO of Sun Microsystems, in another session.

According to Jonathan Schwartz, “The power of open source is not code. Very few of us know how to modify it”.

He said that the power is in the community and in the distribution of the product and with a partnership with Google they will be able to focus on better distribution.

According to Jonathan Schwartz, “Google is powerful not because it’s running on any one technology, but because its service is free”.

Dan Farber has reported that Schwartz said, “What matters more in this world is the price of the software. Free software is what has massive power. Google is powerful not because it’s running on any one technology, but because its service is free”.

He acknowledged that this opinion could anger some members of the open source community and added, “If you choose to focus on the code, you miss the massive phenomenon that has taken over the world, which is the freedom with which you can access wonderful network services … Source code has no value in and of itself”.

 

 

 

 

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