How does that old saying go? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em? Unfortunately for Microsoft, that has been there motto for the last couple of years as they continue to struggle to keep up with Google.

There is no doubt that the recent release of Google Gears by Google has the potential to be revolutionary because it allows people to take their web-based services offline. For those that travel, this is a truly invaluable feature that allows for people to still work while on airplanes or other places that don’t have internet access. Microsoft doesn’t have quite the web-based stable of services that Google does, but I think they sure took notice of the possibilities that Google has now with Google Gears, so they decided to create Microsoft Sync Framework. Yikes! That name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

According to ZDNet:

Based on descriptions posted by Microsoft to its download site, the new framework will enable collaboration and offline capabilities for any application. It will roam and share information from “any data store, over any protocol, and over any network configuration,” according to the company. Microsoft has built and is making available to interested testers a reusable provider for synchronizing the contents of file system directories on PCs and removable media, such as USB thumb drives, according to the Web site.

I’m assuming they will target some non-Microsoft web-based services, as they don’t really have a lot of web-based services to use it with right now.