The agreement was announced last October 5 (Manila time) by Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy and Google chair Dr. Eric Schmidt at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

A tele-conference participated by journalists from different countries around the world followed the official announcement.

Sun Microsystems’ Java technology and OpenOffice.org compete directly with Microsoft’s .Net Web service strategy and MS Office, respectively. On the other hand, Google’s widely popular search engine competes with MSN Search.

A statement issued by Sun Microsystems said the agreement aims to make it easier for users to freely obtain Sun’s Java Runtime Environment (JRE), the Google Toolbar, and the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite.

The companies committed to bring, within 30 days, the Google Toolbar to Java software. This means that the toolbar is already integrated in the software once users download them from Sun’s website.

Java, which is celebrating its 10th birthday this year, supports a $100-billion market. Downloads of Java have more than doubled year over year, reaching 20 million per month.

The agreement between Sun and Google is also expected to kick off further collaboration between the companies on projects like OpenOffice.org, the most common productivity suite on the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and Linux.

The product of the collaboration is expected to produce an enhanced productivity suite that is readily available in the Internet and that will rival MS Office.

"Working with Google will make our technologies available more broadly, increase options for users, lower barriers and expand participation worldwide. Free and open source technologies, such as OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris and Java, have never been safer or offered more choices," McNealy said in a statement.