Google Pack

Google Pack is another brilliant business move by Google that must have sent another shiver down Microsoft's spine. If you haven’t been touched by the buzz yet, Google Pack is a bundle of free software that is supposed to take care of your general day-to-day dealings with your computer. The strategy is simple. And brilliant. If you are a normal home user, you just want to get your work done. You don’t want to bother about downloading the right software and keeping it updated. Now, Google would do that for you. It also provides an Updater software that keeps checking for updates of every software included in the Pack. Besides, all the software is absolutely free. The Pack has the potential of giving Microsoft a black eye in two ways. First, many offerings in this pack compete directly with Microsoft products like Firefox against IE, Real Player against Windows Media Player, Google Talk and Trillian against MSN messenger. Surprisingly, the Pack does not include Open Office though Google has been endorsing it for quite some time. Second reason is a more far-fetched one. As users start using non-Microsoft software for their daily work, the underlying OS becomes less important. And it becomes easier for users to switch to another (cheaper and maybe, open source) OS if they can use the same set of applications with the new OS also.