It's really amazing that there are so few people discussing the outright war going on between Google and Microsoft at this moment. Microsoft, with MSN has been firing rockets left right and centre at Google. They are basically trying to duplicate everything Google does and now they're throwing large buckets of money at advertising.

I go to the movies and I see ads for MSN - I've never ever seen an ad for Google. In fact, when Google first stated I don't remember seeing an ad for them then either. They advertise mostly by word of mouth. That'll only take you so far.

But how will Microsoft beat Google? It's simple really - if you remember back to the days of Netscape vs IE, you'll remember that Microsoft bundled IE in to their operating system. The argument being that browsing the web was such a core function of any operating system that it should be bundled.

Well, what could be more core than searching. You need to search many things these days. From your own computer to things on an intranet to things on the internet. There is very little distinction between them now. Oh, and let's not forget those screenshots of Longhorn and their metadata based searching for documents on your own computer. You can bet your bottom dollar Longhorn will be integrated with MSN.

I'm sort of surprised that Apple hasn't clued in to this yet and integrated their own desktop search system with google or the like. The problem with Apple is that they'll be nice and 'open' about what they're 'doing and how they're doing it. Microsoft, on the other hand, will hide it all in the background - which in general makes it more user friendly by reducing the amount of 'thought' required to complete the operation.