Of all the tech stocks to watch, perhaps none have been more interesting to follow than those of Microsoft, Google and Apple in recent days.

With so much news emanating from this trio of tech icons, their shares have been gyrating and twisting on each and every piece of information, including:

Microsoft (MSFT) and its many new products, from Windows 7 to the Bing search service.

Google (GOOG), which has never met a launch it did not tout in a blog post, from Google Wave to its Android efforts in the smart-phone market.

Apple (AAPL), of course, which gets a mass of coverage every time the company clears its throat. The noise everyone is listening for now, as you might have guessed, is any shred of news about the new tablet, whose name–a BoomTown educated guess only–is going to be iSlate.

So, here are some things of note about the stocks:

Like Silicon Valley Bobbsey Twins, Apple and Google are neck and neck with regard to their market valuation, each hovering in the $169 billion to $170 billion range. (Microsoft’s stock is still much bigger at $247.6 billion.)

Apple’s shares have been tamped down over the last month, up only 2.4 percent, compared with a 10.2 percent rise for Google and an 11.7 percent rise for Microsoft. That said, Apple fared a lot better than Yahoo (YHOO), which was down 5.9 percent for the month.

But, year-to-date, Apple’s stock performance still reigns supreme, up 121.8 percent, compared with Google (73.6 percent) and Microsoft (43.4 percent).

For the week, though, they are all down–Apple is off 6.5 percent over the last five days, while Google is down 3.6 percent and Microsoft declined slightly less, 2.8 percent.

Here’s a chart of the three stocks below, over the last month (click on it to make the image larger):

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Just as there is a tendency to inanely cheerlead the tech sector valuations on the way up, there is inevitably the equally ridiculous overreaction to the downward slide going on right now for digital companies.

Thus, while by no means the weakest sector of the economy, a range of tech stocks got hammered today in the markets, getting dragged down with the market at large as investors continued to fret about a sustained worldwide recession that government bailouts could not prevent.

Consider, after a week of getting socked, even more blows:

Yahoo (YHOO) closed at $15.19, down about 5 percent or 81 cents.

Google (GOOG) closed at $369.37, down just under 5 percent or $17.54.

Microsoft (MSFT) closed at $24.91, down 5.4 percent or $1.41.

eBay (EBAY) closed at $17.89, down 5.5 percent or $1.05.

Interestingly, the company with the most consumer exposure, Apple (AAPL), fell below $90, before closing at $98.14, up 1.1 percent or $1.07.

Now, there’s no question some of this tech carnage was due to the sector riding higher than most and worries about future results. Analysts are cutting estimates across the industry, in anticipation of weaker advertising and international markets.

At this point, as much as BoomTown has warned about the impact of the financial crisis on Silicon Valley, the meltdown in tech shares is beginning to feel a little undeserved and overdone.

After all, does anyone doubt most advertising will move online? Or that tech will not continue to permeate all sectors of our society and economy in the decades ahead? Or that digital companies, for all their fattening up of late, are not the most adept at adapting themselves to leaner times?

After all, everyone in tech did learn a thing or two from the bursting of the last bubble, which was entirely appropriate.

This time, while the industry had begun to party like it was 1999, the more recent expansion–aside from the lofty valuations for start-ups–was done in a way that will make it much easier to cut back.

I kind of feel like I might be channeling Chip Diller, the annoying ROTC cadet in “Animal House” (played by Kevin Bacon), with his famous line, “All is well, remain calm,” even as all hell was breaking loose around him (see video below).

But with a little rejiggering, it’s still the right prescription for the months ahead. In the short term, all is not well.

Nonetheless: Remain calm.