Big power brings big responsibility, and these two companies have no chance of ducking or diving the challenges they face.
The major problem Google has right now is when it comes down to the security/privacy debate. Perhaps the biggest story so far this year centred around the company's threat to pull out of China following hackers attacking its own intellectual property and the accounts of Gmail users sympathetic to human rights campaigners.
Even if this huge story goes away in the future, Google will always be under pressure to deal with the responsibility being a massive cloud provider brings. Many people trust it with their data, including personal details, and although widely trusted as a brand, its biggest challenge will be trying to keep a clean slate of a reputation.
Apple may not hold so much data like Google, but as a market leader in a couple of spaces right now it has rubbed a few people up the wrong way. A number of patent cases, albeit yet to be proven, have been taken out against the company claiming it has stolen technology from the likes of Nokia and Kodak to make its products as good as they are.
We are yet to know whether this was a deliberate violation or is just sour grapes from some bitter competitors but there is nothing quite like the underdog attacking the big player so it seems its biggest challenge will be keeping the packs at bay.
On top of that, there's the PR debacle that has been the iPhone 4 reception issue. While many customers will be happy to get a free case and move on with their lives, others have already taken issue with Jobs' tone, with some calling it arrogant.
We think that Apple's challenges are probably nicer ones to handle, revelling in the top spot and being the figure of jealously for other companies, with a few PR issues needing sorting. However, whilst Google may not be as large of a legal case target, it is one for cyber criminals and as technologies on the black hat side get more advanced, this is definitely the bigger challenge to face.
