To hear Sun, Google and the Anything But Microsoft campers tell it, Microsoft Office will be officially toast any day now.

I say they're wrong. But not because Microsoft Office — even with 90+ percent of the desktop office suite market share to its credit — is unbeatable.

Even though Sun and Google did not, as many predicted, announce this week a "GoogleOffice," pundits say it's only a matter of time before the pair could hatch such an animal.

Whenever — and if ever — Sun and Google deliver a light-weight, fast, cheap Web-based Office alternative, Microsoft Office will not be its primary competitor, however. Instead, the growing collection of MSN Services, especially the pending "Kahuna" Hotmail upgrade and Microsoft's as-yet-unannounced hosted SMB collaboration bundle, will be what the Redmondians pit against the new "StarOffice in the sky" offering.

Microsoft Office is a "smart" (a k a, fat, bloated — choose your beefy synonym of choice) client. It's not meant to run over the Web. Ask folks who've tried using a hosted version of Office. It's a slow and painful experience.

Outlook Web Access and Kahuna (the Hotmail/Outlook Web Access successor, also known as MSN Mail) are Ajax applications. They were designed from the get-go as Web apps.

Kahuna is currently in a small private beta test. The Kahuna team, which has been blogging and Channel 9ing its way into visibility, has said to expect Kahuna to look nothing like Hotmail. The app will look and feel a bit like Outlook, but will be faster, simpler and safer than its predecessor, team members have said. No word yet on when it will go live or how it will be distributed or packaged. But it will be a "brand new service," the team members promise.

Kahuna isn't the only potential competitor to a Google Office. Sources have said to expect a new hosted collaboration suite aimed at small/mid-size business customers to launch under the MSN banner some time soon. The bundle will include e-mail, unified messaging, instant messaging, VOIP and data-conferencing capabilities all rolled into a single, hosted collaboration suite, partners told Microsoft Watch.

With its latest reorg, and its decision to unify the platforms and MSN services teams into a single division, the Microsoft brass put in place a structure better suited to defend against Sun/Google-style partnerships and their associated services offerings.

It's not clear to me that Microsoft's combined platform and services unit is ready to go on the offensive, however. Kahuna is Microsoft's answer to Gmail and other Web mail programs. The forthcoming MSN SMB collaboration suite is a hedge against eBay/Skype. Is there a hot technology arena where Microsoft has fielded a new product first over the past few months and others are scrambling to catch up? I am coming up blank.

Help me out here, readers. Point me to a place where Microsoft has Google and other competitors on the run. And, while you're at it, how about firing over some suggestions for services you think Microsoft's combined platforms/services division should field in the next year or two to combat the perception that the old Microsoft dog can't learn any new tricks.

Talk back below or write me at mswatch@ziffdavis.com and
let me know what you think.