Unless I'm completely mistaken, the last couple of times there was an application versus platform war, platform triumphed - think Lotus 1-2-3, for example. You may be right that encouraging people to switch to OpenOffice is an improvement over a total Microsoft platform, but it is only an application, not a platform. I'm fairly sure that unless FOSS is successful in overturning the platform, Microsoft is not going anywhere. What Apple and Google have going for them, if there is such an alliance, is that they respectively provide platform and application. Unfortunately, Google is not a killer exclusive app for the Mac platform, and their bread-and-butter search and advertising is their main revenue stream. Their applications, IIRC, are all losing money. Hardly a logical place for Google's shareholders to keep it?