In fact the most they seem to be suggesting is that OpenOffice.org might at some point in the future be integrated with a Google powered Web file store as a backend service. That sounds nice, plays to the strengths of both Sun (who already have the desktop suite) and Google (who's internet server resources are second to none) and may well damage Microsoft's putative efforts at a similar service.

With such a modest service I think Sun and Google will have a fight on their hands though. There is just far too much investment (in money, VBA apps and personal skills) in MS Office out there, and MS Office is frankly far too superior to OO.o for this to work out very well in anything but the very long haul. Given that, I'd expect the back-end service to be fairly generic and open API based so that it will integrate with many client applications, almost certainly including MS Office itself.

Imagine a Google Toolbar for MS Office. I can easily see this happening. If they make it co-incide closely with the Office 12 release, they'd have a decent chance of having it become a near-ubiquitous part of the Office 12 user experience.

Simon Hibbs