“Ladies and Gentleman, this fight is scheduled for 5 rounds in the IT Heavyweight Division.  In this corner, from Mountainview CA, weighing in at 10 Billion dollars the Search engine champion of the Woooooorld, Google!  ..And the challenger, hailing from Redmond, WA…weighing in at 44 Billion dollars, the Gatekeeper, Microsoft! Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!!!!”

Well, I joked about it in an earlier post, but once again Microsoft has proved anything you can do, I can do better.  For months reporters have been covering the Google/Microsoft war and predicted what moves would made, what companies would be acquired and what partnerships will be established. What was particularly interesting was that in this slew of coverage, Microsoft was often cited as the underdog. 

Of late, the battlefront had been on the grounds of the 2.0 world.  Nope, before you ask - there were no humorous “physical” battles in Second Life to watch. (Although it probably would have been the first useful application of an avatar in a while…)  Instead, there has been a jockeying of position for social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace.

 Today it happened – Microsoft won its latest sparring match with Google, securing a deal to buy 1.6 percent of Facebook for $240 million - a move that will lead to a new bombardment of online advertising.  With this move, Microsoft will now be targeting and learning from the habits of 50 million active users.

Now in the PR world we’ve been discussing the various applications of social sites based on their actual purpose - networking and outreach capabilities.  However, with the corporate world moving further into these sites, what will be the future?  Will it be a mass inundation of ads and banners or a slew of cool new applications and features?  I guess only time will tell.  I mean, as the conglomerates all mingle, what’s the worst that could happen?

What do you think?  Feel free to let me know or leave a message on Mr. Gates wall.