Google Pack Offers Nothing New

Announced last week during the final keynote of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the new Google Pack is a suite of downloadable software offered by Google and a few other partners. Google touted the new launch for its ability to allow users to "painlessly install all the essential software they need." Google has paired the Google pack with a a new updater feature designed to alert users whenever new versions of the software are available.

Like many other search industry watchers, I headed off to the Google Pack site when it was announced to find out what nifty new software I might be able to download and install. I was dissapointed to find that the pack included nothing new. As far as Google software goes, it included just Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa and the Google Toolbar plus an option to add Google Talk. In terms of partner software, it's pretty much Adobe Reader, Firefox with the Google Toolbar and "special editions" of Ad-Aware and Norton Antivirus. (Optional downloads for RealPlayer, Trillian and GalleryPlayer.)

That's it.

No Open Office, no nifty new offerings, just some odd assortment of free downloads from around the web. Apparently the only thing "special" about Google Pack is the updater option. Last time I checked, however, most of those free downloads already notified users when a new version was available. That leaves me wondering exactly what the reason would be to use it, unless you've got a brand new system and need a quick way to download some of the more popular free programs.

Time will tell what use Google will make of the Google Pack feature and one would hope that they've got some big plans for it. Otherwise, it seems to be much ado about nothing.