Interesting news that Sun and Google are allying to further their respective technologies.
Google is becoming more and more a champion of open source and open standards. Internally they use huge amounts of FLOSS. So it is in their best interest that the various projects continue to grow and improve. Their summer of code was a great initiative to improve FLOSS projects but more importantly to get young developers in touch with FLOSS.
The technologies they adapt for their own services are not always completely open but they are moving more and more into that direction. Google Talk uses Jabber/XMPP which is open and easy. The alliance with Sun focuses on promoting the JRE and OpenOffice.org (two arguably open parts of Sun’s business). They already employ a couple of Mozilla developers and now I read they have hired Ian Hickson from the WHATWG.
Empowering FLOSS gives Google a tactical advantage because the projects they are helping help Google. More importantly in this Great Game for who is going to rule the web: strategically it poises them head on straight against Microsoft.
Sun is our troubled old tech company that makes solid products but nobody seems to like. They are trying adjust to this new world of free and open but they are not very fast at it.
They could take a lead from Google in how you can not be evil and be loved at the same time.
