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Casual gaming powerhouse Zynga has bought Challenge Games. Challenge is well-known for games offering strong "virtual goods" elements.

Zynga has built up its estimated $5 billion in worth and with 200 million users, largely on games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, popular on Facebook. But it has been going to town in an effort to extend its popular franchises. Challenge may provide it with a means of turbocharging its in-game economies.

Plenty of enterprise 2.0 companies have set their sights on replacing SharePoint. But so far, not one has shown the gumption of Box.net, the filesharing and collaboration service which has launched the Box.net vs. SharePoint challenge.

Based on the premise that "sharing should be simple" and implying that SharePoint is anything but, Box.net's campaign is more than a marketing ploy. It's a bold sign of the growing conflict between hungry young startups and Microsoft over who will dominate business collaboration in the years to come.