Microsoft's upcoming Document Collaboration Companion.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple's new iWork.com service will move the Mac further into the market for Internet-based collaboration, letting users of its word-processing and spreadsheet software share and work together on documents online.

Turns out Microsoft is looking to take the Mac in the same direction.

The Redmond company's Mac Business Unit, plans a new "companion" application for Mac Office 2008 to let people share documents through the company's SharePoint and Office Live Workspace collaboration services. The free "Document Collaboration Companion" is expected to be released as a private beta next month, with a final version later this year.

Apple's Pages and Numbers programs, part of the iWork suite, compete with the Mac versions of Word and Excel from Microsoft. Apple executive Phil Schiller unveiled plans for iWork.com today during what's expected to be Apple's final Macworld Expo keynote.

The free beta of iWork.com launched today, in conjunction with Apple's release of iWork '09. Users will click on the iWork.com icon in the Keynote, Pages or Numbers toolbar and sign in to the browser-based service using their Apple IDs. Features include document uploading, sharing, comments and notes. It will work with iWork, Microsoft Office and PDF formats, Apple said.

The service will ultimately cost money, Schiller said, without naming an expected price or final release date. Apple doesn't commonly run public betas, but Schiller said the company expects feedback from customers to shape the product before its final release.

"We're going to find out together all the great things we can do," he said.

Sharepoint is Microsoft's collaboration offering for businesses. Mac users can access Sharepoint currently through Web browsers on their computers, but that causes problems including multiple versions of the same document, said Mike Tedesco, a Microsoft Mac Business Unit senior product manager.

Microsoft's new Document Collaboration Companion will tap into native Sharepoint capabilities including the ability to lock a document when it's checked out, and track who has made changes.