This announce­ment at TechCrunch (and the related links, jump down the rab­bit hole for full details) is one of the most inter­est­ing announce­ments in the server/​scripting lan­guage space I’ve seen in a very long time. No, it’s one of the most inter­est­ing announce­ments I’ve heard, period, In a long time.

Behe­moth Microsoft and PHP player Zend are join­ing forces and play­ing nice in order to facil­i­tate PHP devel­op­ment on Microsoft’s server plat­forms. Wow! On top of that, the announce­ment with respect to Office Live com­ing out of beta and being cheap to have, and the release of Office Account­ing Express 2007.

This is all incred­i­bly impres­sive and if it isn’t man­gled by Microsoft as it tries too hard to keep con­trol of the plat­form and block the Web 2.0-ness of all this, it could sig­nal a major shift in the play­ers in the online office tools and appli­ca­tion server space. I’m with Michael Arring­ton on this; Google must be feel­ing the pres­sure a lit­tle this morn­ing.