Productivity and Communication

Google has the Apps for Business productivity suite, with tools including word processing and calendars, as well as its booming Apps Marketplace of third-party apps. Facebook said it wants to kill email, but tell that to those who check their inbox for work every day, among them some of the 200 million Gmail users. There are at least 3 million businesses using Apps, with the biggest growth among small companies.

If Google provides companies with a full-fledged Web presence integrated with its social networking platform, there'd be little reason for Apps users to leave the world of Google products. (One Google Apps user already stumbled across a sign that .) There's simply no equivalent potential in the Facebook realm, even despite the . Plus, Google already wraps video chatting into Apps--not to mention .

Along with Google News, Facebook has become a major traffic driver to news websites. Facebook users can "Like" and comment on web pages, while the Google+1 system only arrived in March. But because it's embedded in Google+, it could quickly catch up if the new social network catches on. Should Twitter watch out?

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