There's a Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. These times must be really interesting for Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft's (Quote, Chart) CEO allegedly said he'd crush Google (Quote, Chart), his company's rival in search, and the lucrative ad business it engenders. On Tuesday, Google may strike back at Redmond's heart: Microsoft Office.
Google and Sun Microsystems (Quote, Chart) will hold a press conference on Tuesday at which they're expected to announce a collaboration to bring StarOffice productivity applications to Google users.
StarOffice is Sun's suite of integrated word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database software based on the OpenOffice open source project.
StarOffice or OpenOffice users can add their own browsers and e-mail applications, while Sun offers Sun Java Communications Suite for customers that want to add messaging, collaboration, calendaring and scheduling tools.
Google's dip into OpenOffice began with its hiring of Joerg Heilig, former director of software engineering at Sun, according to Gary Edwards, a consultant and designated representative of the OpenOffice.org open source community.
