Microsoft To Team Up With Postal Service?

Maybe that joke about Microsoft and the Vatican wasn’t so farfetched after all.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software company hasn’t gone so far as to buy the Roman Catholic Church, as a prankster wrote on an Internet bulletin board last December.

But it does have a partner that’s closer to God than most businesses: the U.S. government, particularly the Postal Service.

The Postal Service hopes to provide its services over The Microsoft Network, set to open in August.

Subscribers to the network could order stamps (which would be mailed the old-fashioned way, but within a day), send out change-of-address forms, look up ZIP codes, request Express mail pickup, and eventually connect to other government offices to get tax forms and do other business.