With all the hubbub and speculation that Sun and Google were going to get together to make a web-based office application suite and knock MS off the map, I can’t tell you how much the actual announcement disappointed. The news, completely underwhelming, turns out to be that Sun and Google are going to help each other out by promoting each other’s free products – Google Toolbar, Java (JRE), and OpenOffice. Woo hoo.

The only way I can imagine this being news is if this partnership signals the beginning of a larger collaborative effort between the two companies, but it doesn’t seem like that’s happening. Microsoft is safe for now, apparently.

Update: The final word is in from Google co-founder Sergey Brin: no web-based office suite, at least for now. I’m glad to hear it - I’m betting that the grand innovation that takes productivity software from the desktop to the web is going to come from a small visionary group, not a behemoth like Google.