It all depends on your own preference.
I would suggest installing Office and all middle ware in the golden image (middle ware being the .Net framework, VC Redists, JRE and flash and stuff like that).
Looking at applications like Chrome and Adobe Reader. We decided to add them into the GI, you could potentially add all these applications in one appstack, it wont harm your performance that much but it all depends on your own preference. Because we always update the GI every month due to Windows Patches we then also update the applications that are installed in the golden image.
Eventually you will need to decide for yourself what you would like to install in GI and what in an appstack.