This is going to be really interesting.

With new ads, Google aims offensive at Microsoft Office
In ongoing war between the two rivals, Google takes to the streets
By Sharon Gaudin

August 3, 2009 01:39 PM ET

Computerworld - In the latest shot fired in Google Inc.'s ongoing battle with Microsoft Corp., Google announced today that it's taking this fight to the streets.
Literally.
Google is kicking off a month-long ad campaign for its online suite of enterprise office applications. The campaign will have the search giant leasing billboard space in four major U.S. cities -- New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. Each work day will have a different message for commuters to take in.
The move comes less than a week after Microsoft announced it is partnering with Yahoo on a search and online ad deal. The two companies announced that they had finalized negotiations on a long-anticipated deal that will have Microsoft's Bing search engine powering Yahoo's sites, while Yahoo sells premium search advertising services for both companies.
The deal is geared to hit Google with a united force much greater than either Microsoft or Yahoo could muster alone. Individually, neither company has much of an affect on Google and its overwhelming search market share. Together, though, they hope to at least make a dent.
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., noted that while Microsoft is busy going after Google's search market, Google is using the billboard campaign it go after Microsoft's bread-and-butter Office suite.
"Each company is targeting the other right now," said Gottheil. "They're laying the groundwork for what they both see as an inevitable collision in the future. Right now, neither company is deriving much revenue from its presence in the other's space... Microsoft is more vulnerable because they must cannibalize some of their current application revenue to expand their application market, where Google only has to maintain a rough technical equivalence with Microsoft to maintain its search franchise."
Google's ad campaign and Microsoft's deal with Yahoo are just the latest moves in this ongoing fight between industry giants.