Microsoft is taking on Google in the cloud, while Google is looking to unseat Facebook in the social media market. What, after all, can we make of Microsoft Office 365 and Google+?Other than both sounding like hopped up caffeinated drinks, the two services are the latest rollouts from two giants bent on extending to other markets which is good for consumers and businesses.Office 365 is Microsoft's realisation that its overly expensive software package is in danger of going under the Google onslaught. In particular, Microsoft sees its lunch being eaten by Google Apps, which has put a dent in its business market.Google Apps for business started in the “cloud” basically the use of the Web rather than your desktop computer for running and storing applications. Under the cloud concept, businesses will no longer have to buy, upgrade or fix software. Instead they will rent it or pay for it by use, which advocates say will save money.I like the upgrade part. We believe we buy our software; but in reality most of us really rent it, especially if it is from Microsoft. Frequent upgrades, the inability to move software from an old machine to a new one, essentially mean a rental model. Microsoft has timed obsolescence to a “T”.Office 365 has email, calendar, tasks, contacts, document sharing, instant messaging, videoconferencing, and access, if you want it, to its Office suite. However Microsoft is only going part of the way to full cloud services.The company believes businesses are not yet ready to put their full faith in the cloud. What happens if the service is hacked and shuts down, for example? But the advantages of full collaboration among team members working at a distance outweigh this potential problem.Microsoft claims 200,000 organisations have tested the service and reported reduced IT costs and productivity gains. It is targeting small to medium-sized businesses and quotes the owner of Travelers Haven as saying she expects to save $100,000 a year and cut 30 hours of work a day across 35 employees.The price is about $2 to $27 a month per employee, depending on the package. Meanwhile, Google's Apps for business costs $5 per user a month (or $50 a year) and claims to have three million organisations as customers: this does not count the millions of ordinary users of the company's free service.Google's advantage is its package is designed entirely as a web service. Microsoft is just learning how to emulate the upstart. Of course, you can now try both and see which one suits your business. Microsoft is offering a free 30 day trial of its cloud services just like Google. Good to see the competition.Another head-to-head battle is developing on the social media scene. Facebook is now under attack from a viable option: Google+. So many people wanted to make the switch that Google was forced to temporarily shut down its test of the service (https://plus.google.com).PC Mag got it right when it noted that Google+ is a bigger concept than Facebook. The magazine predicts the service will become a central part of the company's identity. I say, really...bigger than search?Google headlines its effort as the “Google+ project” with the slogan “real-life sharing, rethought for the web”.Of course Google's advantage is the services it can tie into Google+, such as Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Apps and its Android operating system for smart phones. A neat feature is the ability to leave Google+ and remove all of your data from the service.This is done through a tool called “Data Liberation”, which allows users to download all of the information and data they put on the service, and erase it from the service, permanently. In providing the service, Google is attacking Facebook's Achilles' heel: privacy.People, including myself, have long complained about Facebook attempts to get people to give up and share an awful lot of their personal information. Many are not even aware of what they are sharing. It's also very hard to delete a Facebook account and be confident your information is not still somewhere on the company's servers.Let's see if a big migration occurs or whether Facebook users stick with what they know best. In the end, I believe people may be forced to have two accounts: one with Facebook and one with Google. Somehow those worlds will have to connect.Send any comments to elamin.ahmed[AT]gmail.com