The chief operating officer of Microsoft, Kevin Turner, said at a company conference: “Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do.”

The “people” that Turner was referring to was Google, and the “food” was corporate search customers. Google has been wading into the world of enterprise search with its Google Search Appliance, which sells for around $2,500 pop. The software allows company employees to search through platforms like intranets, content management systems and file servers.

There’s no question that Google is competing in Microsoft’s space now. But isn’t Microsoft’s space so huge that there’s not much other choice?