Hamlet: Act I, Scene V Ghost Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, -- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce! -- won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuo Hamlet: Act I, Scene V Ghost Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, — O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce! — won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen: O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there! I’m not sure who will be the queen and who will be the ghost as an outcome of the “global strategic alliance” between Google and Salesforce announced this week, but I do predict there will be one of each.“O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!” says the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and for reasons I will explain, this glorious — er, I mean, global — announcement of a close relationship between Google and Salesforce reminds me of that very scene in Act I.In the announcement, Kraig Swensrud, vice president of applications at Salesforce, described in detail the very tight integration between Salesforce’s CRM app and Google’s growing productivity suite. O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power/So to seduce! All is sweetness and light at the moment. If a salesperson equipped with the integrated apps puts a “to do” task in Salesforce, it will appear in the Google calendar entry. If two people are working on a presentation at the same time — say, an art director changing the colors of the bars and a finance person changing the number of dollars in the bars in the graph — both will see, in real time, the changes being made. Gmail messages will be automatically sent to leads or contacts in the proper component of Salesforce. It is indeed quite an integration effort from both parties, due in large part because both companies have the same 100 percent Web- and multitenant-based architecture. On top of all that, next summer, the partnership will become even more integrated by giving customers a single bill that combines both companies’ services.However, 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. With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts How, I ask, will both companies and their leaders be willing to compromise their portion of the partnership if at some later date the other decides it wants to upgrade its service in a way that is not immediately compatible with or beneficial to the other’s application?Who will give in if Google wants to upgrade Apps in such a way that does not sit well with Benioff and company? Who will give in if Google wants to partner with an ERP company that is not part of Salesforce AppExchange? How will Google react if an AppExchange member offers a productivity suite integrated with Salesforce that suddenly grows in popularity?I see trouble ahead. O Mark, what a falling-off was there! Like all great partnerships that fail, there are winners and losers. One needs the other more. So who will be the queen and who the ghost? Google will receive the crown, and Salesforce will be crowned. Google will buy out Salesforce, or the two will come to a parting of the ways, in which case Google will have lined up another CRM company, leaving Salesforce to scrounge around for another productivity suite that has the brand recognition and industry clout of a Google. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast Salesforce meets Microsoft? Stranger things have happened. Technology Industry