Google and Apple announced Friday what many analysts have long predicted: That they will settle the long-standing competition between the two companies with a series of giant robot battles.

The announcement comes as the culmination of a series of parallel developments between the two competitors. Apple recently unveiled its new Apple TV with 99-cent streaming episodes, and Google followed a week later with Google TV, to be deployed this fall.

In recent years, Google and Apple have tussled in the smartphone, browser and online-advertising markets. It's only natural, many say, that they would progress to competing in the area of 400-foot-tall battlebots.

Over the next few weeks, a series of fiery, destructive battles will be staged in several major U.S. cities, with European clashes to be rolled out in Q2 2011, pending compliance with several EU giant-robot regulations.

Apple's robotic war machine, dubbed the iMech, boasts a battery of 200 laser-guided homing missiles, eye beams capable of melting steel in seconds, and easy sync with iTunes and MobileMe. Google's offering, the Android Mobile Combat Unit Zero, includes a 50-foot gauss rifle, an adjustable wide-angle particle beam and swappable MicroSD storage. Their first battle is scheduled for San Francisco, and locals are already divided on the subject.

"You gotta go with Apple," said web developer Marco Sanchez. "One look at those curvy, shoulder-embedded flamethrowers and you can't help but hope that, if someone's gotta stomp your house into rubble, it'll be the iMech. Believe me, when that thing shows up at your local coffee shop and burns it to ashes, people will be talking about it."

"Typical reality-distortion field nonsense," countered cab driver Emily Heverson, referring to the iMech's twin Reality Distortion Field emitters. "While Apple's busy trying to make hipsters feel cool for being blasted into their constituent particles by some overpriced, overhyped death machine, Google is working on creating something that people can actually use: a supersonic needle cannon that tears through flesh and stone as if they were cotton candy."

In fact, the iMech has already inspired controversy due to its lack of fusion-powered jump rockets.

"Every giant battle mecha created in the last 20 years has had jump jets," said industry analyst Martin Fiero. "And now [Apple CEO Steve] Jobs decides that his robot doesn't need one? Sure, its foot-mounted gravity dampeners are new and sexy, but it's not clear the market can accept a jetless war robot."

Noted Apple blogger Mar Gammera disagrees. "I think what we're seeing here is the death of the jump jet, as well as the death of several thousand civilians," Gammera said. "Apple, as usual, is on the cutting edge of vertical robotic transport, as well as on the cutting edge of plasma-bladed energy swords the size of a city block."

Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that it has begun work on the Microsoft Vorp, a Windows 7–powered hovertank to be unleashed on Chicago in 2012.

"I think people want what works: a combination of traditional tank design, established Hover technology and our award-winning Windows software," said Microsoft spokesman Raymond V. Erinsen. "We expect that when the numbers come in, it will be our hovertank that looms over the ruined landscape of a world in flames."

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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a mech pilot, a star pilot and a television pilot.

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