It’s no secret that Microsoft wants a juicy bite of Google’s market share, they’ve been trying to catch up for a couple of years now with their Live.com suite of services. More recently they’ve smartened up with a few projects like their Live Writer software for bloggers and their shared source initiative with .NET. Google hasn’t been idle either. They’ve been busy improving Google Docs and that puts Microsoft’s home turf between the crosshairs. In response, it looks like Microsoft is making a good decision by adding iPhone syncing to their Office 2008 for Mac release.

Microsoft reported on the Mac Mojo blog that “getting presentations from PowerPoint 2008 for Mac to your iPod or iPhone is easy. PowerPoint exports your presentation as a series of pictures directly to iPhoto, or saves those same slide images as pictures to your Pictures folder. From there, sync pictures to your iPod or iPhone through iTunes as usual, then use the built-in Photos or slide show program on your iPod or iPhone to show your presentation.”

This adds to Microsoft’s engaged mobile audience because Windows Mobile is already able to import PowerPoints. If they then decided to open Windows Mobile to external developers and create additional platform bridges they could cause havoc for Google’s Android project.

Google is committed to creating interest in their new Android operating system and so far they’ve generated buzz by offering substantial rewards for killer apps. They also just released their Maps Mobile 2.0 application, a likely Android component. The scales are swaying and there isn’t a clear frontrunner right now. The tipping point will be if Google can create a value proposition that encourages wireless partners like Verizon to open their networks while designing hardware that saves time, is low cost, and trendy.

Then again, Microsoft won’t stay sleepy forever.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 8:03 pm under Blogosphere, Google, Microsoft.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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