Both Microsoft and Google are boasting about large customers they’ve won. Last week, Google said that McClatchy, which owns The Sacramento Bee and other newspapers, is switching 8,500 workers to Google Apps. Microsoft held news conferences with San Francisco and New York officials when those cities chose Microsoft reports the Seattle Times.

While word processing on the Web may seem mundane, the competition between Google and Microsoft over Web-based applications is the stuff of high drama. Google protested in federal court when a U.S. cabinet department favored Microsoft. Steve Ballmer has personally visited department officials to court its business. Google’s marketing slogan is that companies have “gone Google.” Microsoft’s retort, “Google gone.”

The competition is hot because email services on Google Apps and Office 365 are a gateway to cloud computing. Instead of getting installed on desktop PCs or corporate servers, software and data in cloud computing will be stored on servers run by a cloud company and accessed via the Internet with smartphones, tablets, laptops, PCs and televisions.

The cloud hosting world for apps is becoming a huge factor in who will be leading the global market for these types of things.  I wonder who will win.  Who do you think controls the global app market for cloud computing?  I’m talking specifically about companies that host the apps in the cloud.