Google and Capgemini is in many ways a marriage of opposites but the power of the combination might be even stronger than the considerable sum of the individual components.

Iconoclastic and hyperactive, US tech giant Google carries a distinctive mixture of insouciance and arrogance. Capgemini is very European, with plenty of scars from battling deeply complex IT projects. However, with the benefit of hindsight it is possible to see that the two have long been on course to meet.

Google’s roots are in consumer and academic worlds but it aspires to sweep all before it and that includes business computing. Its chief executive Eric Schmidt is formerly of Sun and Novell, and Google has hoovered up a bunch of app developers that do on the web what Microsoft Office has done on millions of hard drives.

By contrast, without sacrificing its business process outsourcing mainstay business, Capgemini has recently been moving in the direction of Web 2.0, developing ways to present digital content for the media crowd.

Google has some hot technology and Capgemini has the keys to get into big business. They could prosper together.