Last year, Apple acknowledged it had licensed ActiveSync to enable better synchronization between Exchange Server and the iPhone.  ActiveSync, as explained on Microsoft’s Web site, is “a communication protocol that enables mobile, ‘over-the-air’ access to your e-mail messages, schedules, contacts, tasks lists, and other Exchange Server mailbox data.

On February 9, Microsoft announced that Google had become the latest ActiveSync licensee. Google apparently is licensing ActiveSync in order to allow tighter synchronization between Exchange and its  newly unveiled Google Sync service.

(Just to be clear: Google didn’t announce it was licensing ActiveSync; Microsoft announced it for them. Today’s announcement on the Google blog never mentions ActiveSync at all. Instead it mentions Windows Mobile.)

Google’s Google Sync sounds very much like the Microsoft My Phone (Skybox) service that the Redmondians are slated to launch next week at the World Mobile Congress show in Barcelona.

Microsoft has licensed ActiveSync to a number of mobile vendors, including Nokia, Palm, Sony Ericsson and others. The standard fee Microsoft charges its ActiveSync licensees is $100,000 “or first-year’s royalties, whichever is higher, with a per unit royalty thereafter.”