Google and Microsoft have for a moment set aside their hyper-competitive tendencies and are together backing, along with Sun Microsystems, a new $7.5 million internet research laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, to help entrepreneurs introduce groundbreaking ideas to mass audiences, reports the Associated Press. The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems, or RAD, lab is scheduled to open today and plans to develop web-based software services that will be given away to all who wants them.

"It's interesting to have Google as one of the founding investors because one of the big questions (the RAD lab is trying to address) is, 'How do you get the next Google out there?'" said Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer.

Microsoft senior researcher James Larus said the collaboration on RAD is not a truce with Google. Meanwhile, Sun and Google are on very good terms. In October, they formed a partnership to develop software tools that might challenge Microsoft's dominant Office suite.