<A HREF="http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6208696.html?tag=nl.e550">IBM announced the release of Lotus Symphony,</A> a suite of free desktop applications based on the OpenOffice.org open-source product. Separately, on Monday afternoon, Yahoo said that it paid $350 million to acquire Zimbra, a start-up that developed a Web-based e-mail and collaboration package comparable with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.

Meanwhile, Google on Monday introduced Google Presentations, an online version of Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation application that complements Google's Web-hosted document editor and spreadsheet.