Microsoft increases Hotmail storage to 5GB as Google bundles StarOffice in Google Pack.
There has been no love lost in recent times between arch-rivals Google and Microsoft but moves in the last few days show the two companies are on a head-on collision course in the Web 2.0 biosphere.
Earlier this week, Google announced it had begun including Sun Microsystem’s previously payware office suite StarOffice as part of its free Google Pack of software tools. Google Pack is an expanding range of free software tools that currently includes its own software such as Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa, Google Talk, Google Toolbar and Google Photos Screensaver and external third-party tools. These tools now cover Norton Security Scan (anti-virus), Adobe Reader (portable document reader), Skype (on-line telephony) and now StarOffice.
StarOffice has previously been sold for as much as $US70 and is closely related to the open-source freeware suite called OpenOffice and based on Sun’s Java platform independent runtime engine.
The addition of StarOffice comes only days after Microsoft admitted that it could release the next version of its venerable budget Works office suite as a free advertising-supported application online in coming months.
Google has also expanded its storage options allowing users to buy online storage with range of plans including:
6GB ($US20 per year)
25GB ($US75 per year)
100GB ($US250 per year)
250GB ($US500 per year)
The online giant now offers 1GB of free storage with its Picasa online photo image service and 2.8GB with a Gmail email account.
But not to be outdone, Microsoft has upped the ante by claiming it will soon be giving Hotmail users 5GB of free storage, more than 2GB above Google’s offering. With Yahoo giving users unlimited storage, it places Google back in third place out of the big-three online entities.
Microsoft will also increase the storage limit to paid users of Hotmail to 10GB.
The storage expansion is part of a number of changes the Microsoft online email service is rolling out over the next few weeks with improvements to performance, quality of service and added extras such as auto de-duplication of contacts and longer retention of deleted entries and folders according to the blog maintained by Ellie Powers-Boyle.
The emergence of online storage and free big-name applications looks to be the first serious threat to Microsoft’s dominance of the PC and it’s a threat that will have consumers front and centre deciding who wins.
Google and Microsoft have appeared as two boxers sparring at each other for the last 18 months however the announcements and releases over the last few days show that the sparring may soon graduate to an all-in brawl.
Source: TECHLOGG
There has been no love lost in recent times between arch-rivals Google and Microsoft but moves in the last few days show the two companies are on a head-on collision course in the Web 2.0 biosphere.
Earlier this week, Google announced it had begun including Sun Microsystem’s previously payware office suite StarOffice as part of its free Google Pack of software tools. Google Pack is an expanding range of free software tools that currently includes its own software such as Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa, Google Talk, Google Toolbar and Google Photos Screensaver and external third-party tools. These tools now cover Norton Security Scan (anti-virus), Adobe Reader (portable document reader), Skype (on-line telephony) and now StarOffice.
StarOffice has previously been sold for as much as $US70 and is closely related to the open-source freeware suite called OpenOffice and based on Sun’s Java platform independent runtime engine.
The addition of StarOffice comes only days after Microsoft admitted that it could release the next version of its venerable budget Works office suite as a free advertising-supported application online in coming months.
Google has also expanded its storage options allowing users to buy online storage with range of plans including:
6GB ($US20 per year)
25GB ($US75 per year)
100GB ($US250 per year)
250GB ($US500 per year)
The online giant now offers 1GB of free storage with its Picasa online photo image service and 2.8GB with a Gmail email account.
But not to be outdone, Microsoft has upped the ante by claiming it will soon be giving Hotmail users 5GB of free storage, more than 2GB above Google’s offering. With Yahoo giving users unlimited storage, it places Google back in third place out of the big-three online entities.
Microsoft will also increase the storage limit to paid users of Hotmail to 10GB.
The storage expansion is part of a number of changes the Microsoft online email service is rolling out over the next few weeks with improvements to performance, quality of service and added extras such as auto de-duplication of contacts and longer retention of deleted entries and folders according to the blog maintained by Ellie Powers-Boyle.
The emergence of online storage and free big-name applications looks to be the first serious threat to Microsoft’s dominance of the PC and it’s a threat that will have consumers front and centre deciding who wins.
Google and Microsoft have appeared as two boxers sparring at each other for the last 18 months however the announcements and releases over the last few days show that the sparring may soon graduate to an all-in brawl.
Source: TECHLOGG
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