MicroSoft is looking to buy a minority stake in Facebook. The deal MicroSoft is interested in would give them 5% ownership of the company. earlier in the year MicroSoft was willing to shell out $10 billion for social networking site, but FaceBook said it was not for sale.

Google is also said to be interested in the minority stake in FaceBook. Google doesn’t need FaceBook as badly as MicroSoft does. Google is constantly innovating and growing their business within the company and with outside acquisitions. Google’s applications are an example of their internal growth and the Google-DoubleClick merger is an example of their outside activity.

MicroSoft did well with their acquisition of aQuantive earlier this summer, but they are still lagging in terms of growth and visibility. Google’s growth is still over 20% annually, whereas MicroSoft’s is closer to 5%. We’ll have to wait and see who has the better first date with Facebook.