So apparently, Google is hiring programmers to work on OpenOffice. Microsoft has to feel threatened at the online search giant's latest move in the office document arena. Google is the one company that Microsoft simply cannot figure out. And I couldn't be any happier to see the folks up in Redmond sweat just a little. For too long they've been the bully on the playground. But a new kid has come to town, and he's beginning to look a little bigger than ever.

I don't have any facts on the matter, but Office has to be one of Microsoft's largest revenue generators. To have someone announce that they will offer a competitive solution, for free, is quite an obstacle. And it's Google's way in to several markets which Microsoft has owned since what feels like the dawn of time. This will certainly be the first arena where Microsoft will face true pressure. Lots of people claim that Linux is a threat to Windows, but that's just not true (at least not yet). The Linux world is too fragmented. There are too many flavors, everyone has his favorite, and no one wants to try another one. Until the Linux community can get that particular act together (not to mention the ease of use factor), the office application arena will be the main battlefield. And I'm glad to see another player has finally joined the game.

The whole thing should be interesting to watch. I question whether Sun's involvement will doom the project (seeing as Sun has doomed virtually everything else they ever touched), but perhaps Google's brains can prevent such a catastrophe. I, for one, salute our (hopefully soon to be) office application overlords.

There's a fair amount of software that I'd like to buy, but every single product has a ridiculously high price tag. First on my list is Adobe Photoshop CS2. Retail price tag: $599. I have Photoshop 5.5 (a truly ancient beast), and I don't think the upgrade (only $149) supports versions that old. My dad could buy it at the academic price (since he's a professor), but the license is listed as "basic"; what exactly does that mean?

Next up is SlickEdit: retail price of $284. There's no doubt this is a great editor (although a tad on the bloated side, one might say), but the price used to be $99! What's up with that? I'm not sure any programming editor (regardless of how great it is) is worth three Benjamin's.

Finally, there's Dreamweaver 8. The upgrade edition (which is the route I would take) is $199. Two hundred dollars for an upgrade? Proof positive that Adobe does in fact own Macromedia.

All of the aforementioned products are great, but are they hundreds of dollars great? That's an incredible hard call to make. It's going to take a lot of thought before I drop that much money on something that consists of nothing but 1's and 0's.

According to the story over at Slashdot, it appears that the Opera web browser is now available for free. This should be an interesting thing to watch over the coming weeks. Will large numbers of Firefox users switch to Opera? I know that I certainly won't, but a number of Slashdot comments already indicate that at least some portion of the Firefox community is (and will be) making the switch. I don't see anything in Opera that immediately jumps out and says, "You should try me now!" Is there something I'm missing? Or is Firefox still the best little browser in the world?