Tech News

Google offers software, Microsoft gets sued

Google is continuing to become an omnipresent company with another move to increase its business software offering. Google has just launched a new line of business software designed to compete with Microsoft Office. The software package is called the Google Apps Premier Edition and will be offered online to individual users for US$50 a year.

Google Apps Premier Edition will combine two groups of software bundles that have been previously unavailable. The first package consists of instant messaging, email, a web page creator, and a scheduling program. The second package has spreadsheet and a word processor programs that can also be used to read and modify documents created by Microsoft Word and Excel.

The Premier Edition is a bigger offering than Google’s previously offered Google Apps software. Google Apps premiered in August last year as a free product.

Analysts are saying that this is just the beginning of Google’s increasing presence in the business software industry. In a few years time, Google will become a major player in corporate software. Google is expected to not only take Microsoft head-on, but the IBM Lotus bundle as well.

Mounting competition is not the only bad news for Microsoft. Microsoft has been ordered by a San Diego federal jury to pay US$1.52 billion for infringing on two MP3 patents held by Alcatel-Lucent. This is the first of six patent lawsuits brought against Microsoft by Alcatel-Lucent.

The lawsuit stems for Microsoft using patented MP3 technology to play music on their proprietary Windows Media Player. The lawsuit was originally filed against Gateway and Dell, but Microsoft replaced them as the defendant when the patents were tied to the Windows operating system and to Windows Media Player.

Microsoft claims to have lawfully licensed the MP3 technology from the Fraunhofer Institute. Microsoft paid US$16 million at the time.

Microsoft is seeking relief from the lawsuit, and may appeal the court decision.

MP3 is not the only patent lawsuit that Alcatel-Lucent has filed against Microsoft. In November last year, Alcatel-Lucent filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for infringing on video technology patents. It is likely that the patents were infringed on the Xbox 360.