VMware in the official announcement for VMware Player 1.0 reported that the product will have a second release in early 2006 to be extensible and customizable by developers. In the announcement is included a quote from Jeff Shardell, director of Google Web Search and Syndication, explicitly referring Google is working with VMware to provide search and security features. This is a big announcement, much bigger than VMware Player itself:

1. VMware started promoting Player by releasing a virtual machine secure for internet browsing, based on Ubuntu Linux and Firefox.
2. Google is highly involved in Firefox development and started a wide sponsorship campaing, paying AdSense publishers for promoting it.
3. VMware and Google have a common competitor: Microsoft (well, quite every IT company in the planet has Microsoft as competitor)

In these months many speculated about an upcoming GOffice (a Google office suite), which has been denied by Google itself, but now, with VMware Player help, I can see Google putting out a GLinux (a self-made Google Linux) very soon. Soon enough to ruin the Microsoft Vista launch...