Google, Salesforce.com Could Join to Fight Microsoft

According to a report in Monday's Wall Street Journal Google is discussing an alliance with Salesforce.com, a provider of Web applications for businesses, in order to better compete with Microsoft when courting enterprise customers.

While Google has reigned supreme on the Web with consumers, businesses have been a harder sell, especially with the ubiquity of Microsoft's Office and server products. In turn, Google was rumored to be interested in acquiring Salesforce.com, but is now looking to a partnership that would integrate services from both companies. E-mail and IM from Google would join Salesforce.com's CRM tools in a single offering.