Jumping straight to Act I, Scene V, Ephraim Schwartz invokes the kingly ghost who tells of "that incestuous, that adulterate beast."

Schwartz sees parallels immediate to the so-called global strategic alliance Google and Salesforce.com unveiled this week.

"I'm not sure who will be the queen and who will be the ghost as an outcome, but I do predict there will be one of each," Schwartz waxes in Google and Salesforce ally -- for now.

"My skeptical mind tells me the seeds of discontent are being sown alongside the integration. Because let's face it, both Mark Benioff and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are no fading flowers."

And trouble could come in so many ways.

Who will give in if Google wants to partner with an ERP company that is not part of Salesforce AppExchange? What if an AppExchange member offers a productivity suite integrated with Salesforce that suddenly grows in popularity?

Schwartz has another: "Salesforce meets Microsoft? Stranger things have happened."

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 15, 2008 10:14 AM