It's a brave market for them to step into.

Whilst competition to Microsoft's products is very healthy for the end user (without competition MS can continue to charge what they like for their software) the Office market is an area that IMHO will remain dominated by MS for as long as the majority of users have Exchange, SharePoint, OCS, Active Directory etc on their LAN's.

The integration with MS is second to none and their Office package is very good - I can't imagine too many people honestly saying that MS Office is crap.

Even if StarOffice is 10 times better than MS Office, unless it integrates with a Domain and the various Domain services then end [business] users will more than likely stay with MS.

It could be a rival for MS Works maybe - for home users/students etc but definitely not the business place, which is where most of the money is......

Google is probably one of the only firms that have the capacity, foresight and willingness to take on MS in various areas - and by teaming up with other organisations they can increase the scope of rival products they can roll out - ( I reckon a Google OS is not too far off ), but I think they will struggle to be a serious competitor with Office.