The Wall Street Journal has a hunch that Salesforce.com and Google have plans to further team against mutual rival, Microsoft.

An anonymous source familiar with the deal told the paper a new pact is expected to be announced in the next few weeks.

The WSJ's inkling, however, runs disappointingly short of ink. The brief article didn't offer specifics on the proposed partnership, but suggested it would be along the lines of integrating Gmail with Salesforce.com's customer relationship management (CRM) software. Salesforce.com customers could use such a service to track their accounts.

The deal carries with our Vulcan logic; after all, Google is already holding hands with Salesforce.com.

For instance, Salesforce for Google Adwords allows Salesforce.com customers to more efficiently buy Google search terms for online advertising.

Both companies also share Microsoft as a rival. Google wants to chip away at the armor of Microsoft Office with its Google Apps online suite. Microsoft and Google have also been butting heads in the search, advertising and web email business.

Salesforce.com can see on the horizon the release of Microsoft's own hosted, on-demand customer relationship management service — expected to arrive some time in the third quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, Salesforce.com is beefing up its compatibility with outside offerings. It announced today an extension to its Apex programming language and framework, which will allow data to move between different applications.

Revealed at the company's developer conference, Salesforce SOA allows developers mash-up different applications through web protocols with custom-written code hosted and run by Salesforce.com. The company said the application would allow its business processes to incorporate other web services such as Oracle Financials, SAP Order Management and FedEx.

Apex and Salesforce SOA are expected to be available in December. ®

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