Among them is Brian Stevens, chief technology officer of Linux seller Red Hat. Some believe Google eventually will have to settle with a more conventional approach: buying technology instead of building it in-house. Google's heavy use of open-source software for its operations has kept its developers in touch with cutting-edge technology, but the do-it-yourself approach has also meant that its employees have technology maintenance responsibilities that most companies leave to others. This is a good place to spend some resources,' he said. 'We were looking for ways to work with Sun and ways to help users. For another, supports OpenDocument, a standardized file format that many endorse as a way to break the lock-in of Microsoft's proprietary formats.ĭiBona didn't mention a wider competitive perspective in giving Google's rationale for investing time and money on nonproprietary software. For one thing, 2.0 was just released with a modernized interface and some new features. And there are other reasons the software is taken more seriously as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Asked about OpenOffice collaboration, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the time only that the search engine power would 'work to make the distribution of (OpenOffice) more broad.' But OpenOffice, like the other software projects the partners intend to work on, competes directly with Microsoft software-a point that has not gone unnoticed.Īs one of the most-watched companies in the industry, Google's involvement has helped Sun draw attention to. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry,' he said.Įarlier in October, Google and Sun announced a partnership to boost several software projects, but released few details. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. 'We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. But the company also has business reasons to justify its open-source embrace. Many of the company's programmers came of age in the open-source era, so advancing the open-source agenda comes naturally, DiBona said. Google has shown an affinity for open-source software, which are programs developed in the open and available for free. 'We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better,' DiBona said. But Google also has business reasons to justify its embrace of OpenOffice, which competes directly with a Microsoft product. The move strengthens the search giant's ties to open-source development. Google plans to hire programmers to improve, an open-source software suite that competes with Microsoft's Office.

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