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Comeon guys, let's see Google Toolbar for Solaris and Linux, lets see google chat/voip for the *NIX platforms.
More importantly, I need google earth on Solaris and Linux.

I'm watching the announcement live now, and I must say that this deal is rather... Vague. Erik of Google is very vague (as Google always is), Scot says a lot but, well, not with much content.

The Q&A sesssion I'm currently watching is much more interesting. However, I really cannot say if all this means that Google's apps are going to run on Linux/Solaris. Vagueness is the keyword here. When someone asked if all this was to replace Windows/MS Office, we got a brrage of buzzwords. When someone else asked to Erik of Google if they are working on an OS, he didn't say 'no', but instead he pointed to Scott and Jonathan Schwarz saying thet they're the OS guys.

Someone else asked if all this would mean that OO.o would turn into a webservice-- the short term answer was 'no', but Erik did say that in the future we might see office apps move to that direction.

The Google Toolbar is already availible for firefox on windows and linux, and maybe even solaris.
http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/index.html

As for Google Talk, you can IM but not use voice. We'll see, they may expand later on. But likely not for solaris anytime soon. Solaris is hardly worth developing Google Talk for, it's not a desktop OS (yet).
http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html

I think if they come out with GTalk for other platforms, it'll be on Mac and MAYBE Linux. Let's face it, most Linux users would rather use a standardized system. Argue about the merits all you want, but that's what the majority will do.

Google Talk is basically Jabber with voice, extra authentication, and a Google brand and server, anyway. Google hasn't done anything to undermine Mac and Linux usage; Notifier's out for mac, and they published Jabber client instructions.

Yahoo and Google Toolbars for Firefox work perfectly on Mac, Linux, and BeOS.

a key thing that jonathon said was "leverage each other's distribution mechanisms".

Yea...O.K. Give it up dude.

would just like to point out, you see applets quite a bit on intranets, just not on the websites joe user visits, those have mostly been pushed aside for flash.

and as for java on the client, expect to see alot more. dotnet will lower peoples expectations for responsiveness and small memory footprints, and it has obviously given sun the kick in the pants it needs for its gui stuff. as swing gets better (which it is currently, at an exponential rate), expect to see more and more java on the client.

will this mean more applets? maybe some from google?

My guess is that they will start moving their desktop software to java.

will this reinvigorate the market for applets?

I doubt it. There are very little that applets are used for that flash cant do better. The only place you really see applets nowadays is in corporate intranet type apps.

are applets viable?

applets are awsome technology, but with a very limited scope in the real world.

will people prefer xul/ajax/xaml so as to keep everything in the DOM?

different tools for different problems.

who knows, there are good args for keeping everything in the DOM, but JS is a terrible language and many people will balk at writing large apps in this fashion, also given the state limitations of http

Javascript is a phenomenal language that is very rarely written properly. The two big problems with javascript is the warped microsoft implementation, and the fact that its so loose that you can be real sloppy and itll still work.

and remember, people have been writing large webapps long before the AJAX craze, let alone XAML. the limitations of http is a marketing ploy to push avalon, nothing more. the next generation (XAML from ms, and the more standards based XUL/JS/SVG/Canvas) will give us a more elegent way to tackle certain things, which is currently covered more by flash then by DHTML/AJAX.

What is wrong with Sun's JRE? it is the best available, and very robust. i believe you are just trolling.

I do think like the parent poster, so I'll answer you. Your question is invalid, your description is correct. JRE is stable and robust (well, up to some point that RE should be at least)

What is wrong with Sun's JRE? it is the best available, and very robust. i believe you are just trolling.

With JRE? Nothing. In fact it works vey nice when typical desktop app is being runned on it. If only people would leave Java on desktop and away from heavy load stuff.

With people coding for JRE? A lot. Some people code heavy load server stuff to be runned on JRE. Sloppy memory, heavy load, server? Well, this is a perfect way to oblivion. There are a lot of perfect ways of JRE usage, but whenever I hear Apache Tomcat, etc... I don't want to even think about it (Having such problems once in my life was enough). The only problem is that Java is not a universal tool for all purposes, but some people don't understand that.

And since there is a lot of cases where Java usage is completely wrong (and that is the only reason WHY) there is a lot of people that think like me and many others. As soon as I hear something being done with Java, I step away and don't install. Just too many bad experiences with anything being Java made. Every now and then I try some Java apps, just to see that they aren't any better (less resource hungry).

p.s. Same goes for .Net engine.

well, from my point of view, Java, especially the Java 5 is pretty good for server application under heavy load. They are easier to scale too. At least you dont deal with crap load of security or coding issues (buffer owerflows, memory leaks) and it is much faster then scripting alternatives. Tomcat is also doing great if you ask me (5.5.x is particularly good). and note that tomcat is not the only choice.. Resin, Jetty, Orion and of course if you really want App servers they are used in heavy load enterprise sites without a problem.
Read this articles for a change if you want.

Story of wallmart.com's Java-5 transition
http://www.theserverside.com/articles/article.tss?l=MigratingtoJava...

A google engineer and Java talk:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/google/limoore...

Become.com, A Massively Scaled Java Technology Application
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/WebServices/become/

You see choices, I see security holes, and I already have enough to deal with in the JRE alone, holes that Sun simply sweeps under the rug and ignores, or passes it off as not their problem ("hey, it's not our fault com.sun.blah has a huge gaping hole since jre 1.1") . Pile on sloppy coding, inefficient resource utilization, disregard to users and other developers, fad and buzzword chasing, magic-framework-will-solve-all-problems, overhyped pointless frameworks equivalent to 4 lines of code and you'll see why most devs would rather ditch java as soon as possible. On the other hand, it you're a consultant type, you'll probably love Java the crap creates an invisible dependency on your services; the real hidden cost and vendor lock-in.

Java could benefit from a good kick in the head and massive overhaul.

"A Massively Scaled Java Technology Application" Holy useless buzzwords, Batman! My toilet is connected to a "Massively Scaled Pipe Technology Network". It's also full of shit.


RE: Don't forget Tarantella
People seem to be forgetting than Sun has got pretty impressive cache of technologies for remote delivery of applications over the network/web. Don't forget that Sun bought Tarantella
Which all sounds and works great in theory and marketing-speak, but simply doesn't deliver in practise. These things always miss out critical items which render them unusable and overpriced except for a very small niche. Incidently, their "impressive cache of technologies" happens to be nothing everyone else doesn't already have, or has easy access to.

If there's anything everyone should at least take away from today's announcement if you hadn't got it before, is that Sun is all hype, all marketing, no substance.

you talk useless FUD i gave you real life exapmples. what can i say more. troll.

If by disease you mean one of the most secure development environments, I'll take it any day. When you spend hours and hours digging for buffer overruns and/or other arbitrary-memory-modification problems which plague native development environments, Java being disease. is akin to comparing common cold and ebola; ebola being the real diseases, memory related vulnerabilities.

Don't be so sure that Niagara is out of the running. Tonight on PBS' Nightly Business Report, McNealy was asked how Sun will monetize the relationship. He did mention selling hardware to Google, but he did not say anything more specific.

Watch the webcast. when questions are asked about an operating system, they dodge the question, and thier body language and the way that they look at each other tells the story. These guys are great at running a company, but they are bad liers. You are right when you say we have to look at the big picture. In order for google to continue to suceed they must continue to reinvent they way they to business. If you were running google, where would you want to be in 2010? How would you go about getting there? Would Sun be a part of that?

A "web based version of OpenOffice" will be a threat to Microsoft?


geez what have you been smokin?

What can Google do? Team up with Sun and convert StarOffice or OpenOffice.org into a web-based office suite with 2GB of space for free with sponsored ads

Then for the corporate market sell an intranet web server with with it and Gmail and other groupware on it. Competes with Office/Outlook and also IBM Workplace. Sun sells servers, Google gets new webservice and there are synergies between the two.