I've noticed this as well.

Facebook, to me (others may use features of Facebook I simply don't care about, like the games and apps), is just email done badly, with a big contact list that tells me who my contacts have as contacts, public message board type thing with a little photo hosting mixed in.

Using gmail as an example, nothing facebook does couldn't be done either just as well or better with email: the gmail contact list could be augmented to be a social network - it already almost is and Google have been trying something like this with Buzz. Email is already better as a messaging system than what Facebook could ever hope to do. Mass emails, mailing lists and services like fiesta.cc and we've covered almost all of Facebooks messaging usecases (private, public, mass/event messages). Tack on a Buzz-like public notice board and an RSVP system for events and everything (plus some stuff Facebook is bad at) is covered. Throw flickr or picasa into the mix (or just a more convenient way to email photos to people) and that use case is covered too.

Except that with email, mailing lists, mass email, bcc etc I am put in control of who gets access to what - privacy is under my control.

At least, thats how I see it. YMMV.

I agree, but it's interesting that Google is doing so much more than just search today and they're not inviting the same response. Is it because the main search service has stayed the same without suffering from feature bloat?

Google never tried to change its core product the way Facebook has. Facebook started as a private network of close friends and they've changed it to an open network of friends, family, and the world. As much as they've changed about the product, they cannot change users' perceptions, which have remained the same throughout. They've basically caused their users to suffer from cognitive dissonance about what Facebook is vs. what they expect it to be.

Google makes separate products. They're well integrated, but you can use gmail without ever seeing maps, and vice-versa.

Facebook on the other hand is monolithic, and that gives it a much greater appearance of omnipresent intrusiveness.

I wonder if this is true of each company's management style too - I don't know anyone in Google or Facebook personally but it does seem to me that Google values engineer autonomy more than any other company (and that is one reason for its huge success, trusting its engineers).

Because you can still do just plain search.

Google makes lots of products that you can use however you please. Facebook makes one product, and when you want to use one aspect of it, you get lots of baggage that you don't necessarily care about.

Its an interesting comparison, but I think at least part of the difference lies in the fact many of google's main services -- search, maps, shopping, news -- are about getting you what you want and away from google. The faster you're done using google, the less time you spend there, the better they're doing. Gmail and apps are more time consuming but I think a certain level of "well, I have no choice to do the this work or not, I might as well have a nice interface" comes into play when using those.

Google's tools seem more about facilitating accomplishing something else as fast as possible, while facebook is the ends in and of itself. How long you spend on facebook is the metric of how well facebook is doing.

At least thats my take on it.

Perhaps you mean anecdote?

I believe the plural of antidote is "I'm not sure which snake just bit me, just give me all the antitoxins!"

This is what I do when I see a personal or corporate link to a Facebook page: I don't click on it. Because I know I can't access it.

The same as I used to do with Scientific American links, and other properties that were inside AOL's walled garden. The difference today is that corporations are smart enough to exist both inside and outside. Since they're already outside, I don't worry at all about what's inside; I'm not missing anything.

As for personal pages, I have the email and blog addresses of all my friends.

We need to look at the type of social groups interacting and using it though. Most people on HN I think would use Facebook less, so we can't be the demographic to base it on. The News Stream is really a gossip magazine just for people you know.

But it's the social party goers that use it. I have a few in my stream, like little sisters. It's used heaps if you're a party goer. Photos, events, global shout outs. It looks like less people use it because you cull a lot of the noisy users.