Introducing... MSGoogle?

Hmmm... I wonder what kinds of new search technology, online gadgets and web advances will come out of this? The possibilities are staggering, yes? Read below...

Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. are setting aside their bitter animosity to back a new Internet research laboratory aimed at helping entrepreneurs introduce more groundbreaking ideas to a mass audience.

Sun Microsystems Inc. also is joining the $7.5 million project at the University of California, Berkeley. The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems, or RAD, lab was scheduled to open Thursday and will dole out $1.5 million annually over five years, with each company contributing equally. Staffed initially by six UC Berkeley faculty members and 10 computer science graduates, the lab plans to develop an array of Web-based software services that will be given away to anyone who wants it.

Conceivably, the lab's services could help launch another revolutionary company like online auctioneer eBay Inc. or even Google, which has emerged as one of the world's most valuable companies just seven years after its inception in a Silicon Valley garage.

"It's interesting to have Google as one of the founding investors because one of the big questions (the RAD lab is trying to address) is, 'How do you get the next Google out there?'" said Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer.

The lab already has created something highly unusual - a bond between Google, the maker of the Internet's most popular search engine, and Microsoft, the world's largest software maker.

READ: Google, Microsoft to fund new Internet lab

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