Google Unveils the Google Pack

Published: January 11, 2006

by Alex Woodie

While rumors of a sub-$200, Windows-less PC that would be sold through Wal-Mart turned out to be untrue, Google did manage to claw its way under Microsoft's skin at this year's Consumer Electronics Show with the announcement of the Google Pack, a collection of free office productivity software. The Google Pack bundles many programs that are already popular and freely available across the Net, including Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Adobe Reader 7, Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Personal, Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2005, Real Networks RealPlayer, the Trillian instant messaging client, the Picasa picture editor, and GalleryPlayer's software for displaying pictures and art on high definition televisions. Google contributed several of its own offerings to the Pack, including Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Toolbar for IE, Google Talk, and the Google Pack Screensaver.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at the Northern California company, said the company developed Google Pack in response to user feedback that it can take days or weeks to install all the software they need to make their computer useful. "We developed Google Pack to give users a way to painlessly install all the essential software they need-- pre-configured in a sensible way--in a matter of minutes," she said in a press release. "Better yet, users don't have to keep track of software updates or new programs--we maintain and update all the software for them."