I never understood why Google chose StarOffice instead of OpenOffice.org to be part of the freely downloadable Google Pack software. But now, and without warning, StarOffice seems to have been dumped by Google.

StarOffice 9 reminds me of the classic Monty Python skit in which Graham Chapman wrestles himself. Although StarOffice is being aggressively presented as an alternative to Microsoft Office, it seems to be equally marketed and bundled to compete against OpenOffice.org, the free software project that is sponsored by Sun and that shares a common code base with StarOffice.

Antitrust exhibit shows Microsoft's fear of GNU/Linux and StarOffice

The purchase of StarDivision, the makers of StarOffice, a German office "productivity suite", by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The subsequent release to the free software community of the StarOffice code, in the shape of OpenOffice, came as a surprise to many.

Easy way to export and import your documents from OpenOffice.org 2.0.4+ or StarOffice 8 to Google Docs.

The same application performs differently on different platforms. Differences include compiler brand (Microsoft Visual C++ vs gcc), compiler version (gcc 3 and 4), operating system characteristics, and file systems. These OpenOffice.org 3.0 benchmarks measure vanilla OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, Go-oo, and Portable OpenOffice.org on 3.0 on Microsoft Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).

StarOffice 9 coming to Mac users; Updegrove explains ISO's failures.

One of the great tech non-events of the last few years involves Linux on PCs. Every so often, another wave of hype washes in about how companies are finally going to ditch their Windows machines in favour of the open-source operating system and productivity apps like Sun’s StarOffice and (more recently) IBM’s Symphony.

Google has made Chrome the default browser in the English version of Google Pack, the search company's application bundle, replacing Firefox.