The battle of the "me-toos" between Google and Microsoft

With the pending release of the Google GDrive online storage service, and with Microsoft's Live Drive also stepping into the foray of online storage as well, it seems that Google and Microsoft are flanking themselves in a perpetual game of one-upsmanship that continues unabated right now. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but this is getting ridiculous.

It seemed, in a sense, that Microsoft was there first in some areas: Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Presentation software for the masses. Yes, to be 100% accurate, Lotus 1-2-3 and others has conquered their respective arenas before Microsoft showed up and gave it to the masses, but I'll digress. Then, Google comes along with a highly-innovative Internet search product that blows the doors of off competitors Yahoo! and Microsoft -- and earns billions for Google (and still counting).

Then Microsoft hires Ray Ozzie to re-invent the software giant in the consumer space into another Google (web-based, well, everything), just as Google buys Writely to compete with Microsoft's Word product, then releases Google Calendar to semi-complete with Microsoft Outlook and Google Spreadsheet to semi-compete with Microsoft Excel.

This is a maddening case of cat-n-mouse and local-install-n-web-based service and product offerings, and it's pitting two giants against each other in very serious and funny-to-watch ways. We're going to round 13 here, folks. Stay in your seats.