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Microsoft Office is the guts of the company's Biggest division. A lot of people have set their sites on it, including Yahoo, IBM , and Sun. Sun and IBM are pushing derivatives of OpenOffice - whose history is nicely explained on Wikipedia.

Lots of people aren't impressed by any of this. But if you look (very carefully) here, you'll see that Microsoft is shipping about a million and a half copies of Office per week - whereas Sun alone claims that they're already pumping out more than this - unless they have a very bizarre definition of "multiple millions." If you work for MegaCorp your boss still probably has you using Microsoft. Because for now, OpenOffice is mainly for cheapskates like startups - but that makes this is a textbook case of disruptive technology, so Microsoft better look out.

What's interesting is that Google has put Sun's StarOffice suite into The Google Pack. This means it's free, and it's endorsed and served up by Google. Google hasn't really pushed the Google Pack to its vast armies of users - they're busy promoting Google Docs for now. But if they do, look out. Sure, folks on high budgets will pay a couple bucks for something that they could basically get for free. But four hundred dollars is another matter.

In other news, rumors continue to swirl about the gPhone. This week, it's expected in 2008. TechBlorge thinks it's seen this movie before.

Of course, AT&T haters are already unlocking their iPhones. Looks like Apple's finally had it with them.

Digg this: the world has a new social network.

A new personal finance service has won the TechCrunch 40. These guys and these guys applaud.