Fear is a powerful force. Fear of the unknown, the new and change are pervasive, especially when Google’s in the room. FOG (Fear of Google) seems to be gaining momentum, but how is it that one of the fastest growing brands in the world, seemingly much loved and out to do no evil is starting to elicit such a gut response?

There’s no doubting Google’s success and phenomenal growth, but therein lies the dichotomy. Google the consumer brand is overshadowing Google the business or enterprise brand. The real challenge is to determine how to get the most out of Google’s technology while potentially competing with it on other levels. And determining whether Google really is the Gorilla it is made out to be, is a good first step.

According to Google’s own positioning its core business can be summarized into three focus areas; 1) search; 2) applications and 3) advertising.

Search – Google has the market share, distribution and consumer adoption to deserve its king of the hill status. Of that, there is no doubt. But browser based text search is very different to enterprise or secure search. Here Google competes with the likes of SAP, Oracle, Autonomy and Microsoft among many others, and its dominance is not so clear-cut.

Applications – It builds many, continues to innovate and leverages a robust developer network. But it took years to bring Docs, Calendar, Talk and Gmail out of Beta. Talk is small compared to Skype and Microsoft, with Windows Live gaining fast. There are reportedly around 1.75 million users of Google’s applications, predominantly its free apps. Compare this with over 500 million users of Microsoft’s Office and we start to see some perspective.

Advertising – With over 60% ownership of the search advertising market via Ad Words, Google clearly dominates this patch, but add other digital channels and formats such as display, video, mobile and social media and its dominance diminishes. Place its share within the context of overall ad spend across all media, estimated at roughly 3%, and it paints a completely different picture.

If Google’s a Gorilla then it’s not gained silverback status yet – not in the genus of an IBM, Oracle, Intel and Microsoft. Microsoft’s leadership position is however very different to the current position that Google is in. Microsoft has entrenched its software on-premise of most large enterprises. This makes it the leader in personal productivity tools. Google’s tools are more focused on collaboration and open systems. They are, however, at the crest of a broader trend arguing for the benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS) over the hosted software approach. Microsoft’s moving fast to play catch-up and may just have an advantage in its army of certified professionals and consultants. This network will do well to argue with larger clients against Google’s reliance on self-help tools and forums.

In the meantime, the pack is keeping an eye on Google as it’s growing faster than the rest and has no limit in its ambitions. If it can replicate the strength of its consumer connections into the enterprise – then the call for “Fright or Flight” will make sense.

Jacques is CEO of Acceleration.