Microsoft, with Live Mesh, may be following Google’s lead in cloud computing, but when it comes to implementation, the two could not be more different, both technically and philosophically. But it’s Google’s model that represents the radical departure. “In it, the cloud is the computer, from alpha to omega. Because there are no disks or volumes for the user to maintain, there is no need for the artificial concept of “files” or a file system to store them in. Persistent storage is reduced to an abstract concept: All that exist are applications and their associated documents,” Neil McAllister explains in this week’s installment of Fatal Exception. No wonder Google makes Microsoft antsy, McAllister adds. Technology Industry