I can almost hear it now. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer comes storming into the morning meeting pissed off that Google has been getting too much buzz about their social networking aspirations. There's some new exec hired from a recent Microsoft multi-billion dollar purchase who's been tapped to head up the online division. A profanity-laced tirade ensues which ends with Ballmer throwing out 'who do we have to buy and how much?' - to which the new guy replies 'Facebook, 5 billion. But I hear Google's interested too...'. Ballmer fires back 'make it 10 billion! - and don't come back unless you've got me 5% of the company'. A day in the life of Microsoft...

This could be the biggest battleground yet for Microsoft and Google - the race to secure a stake in Facebook. And guess who wins? Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has supposedly already come back saying he thinks his little company is worth $15 billion. This kid is ballsy - I like it.

Meanwhile Microsoft/Google is turning into Yankees/Red Sox. Facebook is this season's Dice-K. You need about $500 million just to come to the table for 5%. Microsoft still has more money, but it's not always just about the money - as was proven when Microsoft supposedly offered DoubleClick MORE money, but they went with Google anyway (at which point Microsoft naturally urged the DOJ to look into possible Antitrust violations by Google). It's great, it's like a soap opera.

Naturally I hope Facebook goes with Google - I just haven't seen enough of anything halfway decent that has come out of Microsoft in the past decade or so; they could royally fuck up Facebook, Google won't. Still, I think it's just as likely that Facebook goes with neither. They could simply be using these "talks" to get themselves more leverage and higher valuations for future funding until they day they can go IPO.

This is all breeding some very interesting talking points though. Mathew Ingram wonders if this will be the straw that breaks Yahoo's back and finally forces them to step in and buy Facebook - something that they've flirted with for over a year now. Yahoo has definitely been kicking itself the past 6 months or so for not going to $2 billion in their offer a year ago...who knows if Zuckerberg even would have taken that though. The wild card here though is the new Yahoo social network Mash. Would Yahoo give up on it so quickly - before its even really launched?

Meanwhile, Rex Hammock compares the potential purchase of 5% of Facebook to Google's 5% purchase of AOL in 2005 - something which I would have certainly forgotten about were I not still waiting for Google Talk and AIM to integrate (which was promised way back when and still has yet to be delivered 2 years later). While this AOL deal may seem rather silly on Google's part now, Rex is right in that it was all about controlling the advertising on AOL. Microsoft currently has the ad deal with Facebook, and if Google stepped in to buy a share of Facebook, you can bet when negations for the ad deal rolls around again, Google will have yet another client. This would severely cripple Microsoft's fledgling (or as fledgling as something can be when you spend $6 billion to buy a company to bulk it up) online ad service.

If Facebook rejects Microsoft's wooing, or worse, falls to Google, I'd bet that Microsoft is going to set it sights on buying another of its big ad partners, Digg.