Reports are rife that Microsoft is testing an online version of Google Apps Premier Edition, or GAPE.

If true, this would indicate that, despite protestations to the contrary, Microsoft indeed sees a threat to its desktop productivity suite (Word, Excel, etc.).

Meanwhile, Google has been spotted canoodling with an Office-like interface to its GAPE, which Duncan Riley at TechCrunch says is "no doubt being implemented by Google to make the service more familiar to Microsoft Office users."

Could Microsoft be trying to become more like Google while Google is in the throes of aping Microsoft?

Meanwhile, Facebook continues to refine its enterprise edge.

What do these things mean together?

Charlene Li at Forrester has been trying to make the point about finding a champion to support Web 2.0 initiatives in the enterprise, which is that radicals are good at raising issues (and rabble), while revolutionaries are the ones who strike compromises and actually achieve some measure of change.

To take that analogy one step further, it may be that Google ends up being the rebel without a cause, endlessly thrashing around over arguments that have already been settled, while Ray Ozzie's Microsoft methodically accumulates assets like Facebook to ultimately provide the bridge between online and offline applications, and between structured and unstructured conversations.