Schmidt said that partnering with IBM and working with its network of resellers and systems integrators was "certainly one of the key planks of the strategy, because otherwise we can't reach the customers".
This would not be the first time that the two giants have worked together on a project. Last year the two agreed to work together on centralised data synchronicity, or “cloud computing” and provided computer science students in the US with complete suites of open source-based development tools, in order to help them hone their advanced programming skills, to help address the challenges of this particular computing model.
Currently, most of Google’s revenue comes from advertising cash, but the search engine giant is in the process of diversifying its revenue streams, and hopes that by putting some focus on the desktop application market, it will be able to compete with mighty-soft, and bring in some major, non ad profit.