I've been scouring the coverage of today's announcement of Windows Live and Office Live and, as is so often the case, the most thoughtful analysis comes from Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg:

"There's been a lot of chatter about how this is a response to Google or how it's Microsoft being dragged into offering these type of services at the expense of losing it's traditional market for Office apps. Well, that analysis is all wrong. Microsoft has been planning this for quite some time, long before it would appear as a response to Google or anyone else.

These new services recognize the importance of connectivity and the near ubiquitous nature of high speed access but also combine with the richness that you can only get from traditional model. These are not replacements for Office or Windows but extensions of them."

Photo by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and CrunchNotes.

UPDATE: Windows Live is… well, it's alive. It's a reworked version of a lot of what Start.com has been offering in all its AJAX-y goodness. Nice to see both Engadget and Joystiq in the included RSS feeds.

Check out Windows Live here

Sign up to participate in the Office Live beta here.

Michael Sampson weighs in with his thoughts on today's announcements at Shared Spaces.