There seems to be a big war shaping up in the tech world. The combatants? Microsoft and Google. In one corner you have the reigning champion Microsoft. They own the desktop market among other markets and they also have the most money sitting in their coffers. In the corner, you have the new challenger Google. They own the Internet search market but have been aggressive in venturing into other markets such as web mail, maps, etc, etc.

It seems both companies will be going head on in different markets for 2006 and probably beyond. Microsoft recently said that they are investing a lot of that money they have in increasing their online presence with their Live products. Also eventually they will be rolling out their new operating system Vista to the consumers. One of the keys to Vista is a much better search tool than what is currently in XP. They are promising that searching your desktop will be more powerful and easier. And naturally this will also extend to searching the Web using MSN. And when you are talking search you will get the attention of Google.

Google is a relative new comer. But there search engine has gained so much prominance that Google is now part of everyone’s vocabulary. But they didn’t stop there. They introduced their web mail product Gmail which offers its user huge amounts of storage space. This forced Microsoft, Yahoo and others to revamp their web mail products to compete. Google continues to venture into other markets with products such as Google Chat, Google Maps, and of my personal favourites Google Earth. And I am just scratching the surface. Of course most of Google’s products tie in with the Google search engine which just makes the products that much better.

So who is going to win? Don’t know if there will be an eventual winner. Somehow I don’t think either company will disappear ala Netscape. But it will be an interesting battle. Microsoft even went so far as saying that we will keep Google honest. It that wasn’t a call out, I don’t know what was.

Key things to look for. On the MS side how well Vista and the new version of Office will do. There have been a lot of rumblings that Vista will not offer anything substantial other than bells and whistles. And corporations will be very hesitant and slow in adopting Vista. Why fix something when it isn’t broken. Also how will MS’s cash cow Office will sell? Will the new Office offer any must have features?

Google is a little harder to predict. This company tends to keep things quiet and just spring something on you. However, they seem to now moving into Office territory with an online word processor. And there are rumours that won’t die that Google will introduce a new Google web browser. Oh great another browser.

I don’t know how things will go down but it should make for an interesting year. Pass the popcorn please.

This has been a tech moment.