But they were connecting people years ago. Facebook, from the perspective of their core features, has gotten only incrementally better over the last 5-6 years. And in doing so they've sucked up a huge chunk of talent.

Google over the same period has produced a huge amount of stuff, some of it (gmail, android) wildly successful. Hell, Google has even cloned facebook itself (and from a technical perspective, arguably, done it better) in that time period. And they've done it with what seems to be a very comparable talent pool. So from that perspective, yes, Facebook's engineering employees are wasted.

The biggest technical achievement of Facebook has been scaling Facebook. They've solved a lot of difficult technical problems to do so. And News Feed, Connect, and Open Graph are all huge steps forward in Facebook's ambition, although the third-party ecosystem still leaves something to be desired. Thank god that Facebook killed Evite, but now I'm hoping for someone/something to kill Washington Post Social Reader.

But again, Google did all that stuff too (almost 1:1, even -- remember that G+ is a facebook clone). And somehow they also found time to make self driving cars, a first tier mobile operating system, ChromsOS, a Dropbox clone, these ridiculous glasses, etc...

Facebook just looks pretty lame in comparison, sorry.

> Google did all that stuff too (almost 1:1, even -- remember that G+ is a facebook clone

That misses qq66's point; G+ isn't a 1:1 clone exactly because it doesn't do anything like a quarter billion photos per day.

I'm not doubting G's potential to handle Facebook scale, but they're very far away from it right now.

Youtube handles 3.7x10⁹ frames per day (assuming 12 fps video, which is a low estimate). That's 3.7 billion frames that have to be converted and checked against an enourmous database of copyrighted content.

You're right that G+ doesn't, but FB doesn't have anything on Google on scaling.

What about Youtube? Picassa? Indexing the whole internet? That is some amazing scale.

I would say the scales youtube and google search operate at show that they could easily handle google+ at facebook's scale.

You do realize that Google has 10 times the employees, revenues, profits, etc. of Facebook?

Of course. But it's a culture thing. Google was producing great innovative madness when they were 1/10th its size size. And Facebook had what is essentially their core service already in place when they were 1/10th their current size. They've since done very little that's interesting. I don't see why that's controversial, nor why so many people feel the need to "defend" them.

The only thing that Google didn't fail with was search. Stop pretending there is anything else they've made which can't be labeled as mediocre copy at best.

Please. Maps, Chrome and Gmail alone make what you said an absurdist lie. (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and put AdSense/AdWords under "search" instead of calling them a separate product.)

Youtube and Blogger were acquisitions, but have done, y'know, pretty well under Google's roof. Android seems to be kinda successful for something that's a "mediocre copy at best".

And those are just the big products. They've had a ton of little successes too, like Earth, Docs, Sketchup, Voice...

And they've had a lot of products that look like clones (Drive, Groups). And they've had a lot of bona fide failures too.

But the point is that Google produces stuff. Facebook kinda doesn't. They improve their existing product and add features to it. Maybe that will change (c.f. Instagram), or maybe it won't. But right now I don't think you can say that Facebook has a culture of innovation in the same way that Google (or Apple, or hell, even Microsoft -- companies that ship new products regularly) does.

I am not a fan of Facebook so don't label me as such.

Google is known for its spectacular flops. The fact that they've used their cash to buy already successful services doesn't make them creative.

I view google as completely unimaginative company. Their search was nice once but right now their search results look like christmas tree so I can't admire them for that either.

Basically, google sucks.

Don't forget Google Docs, Maps, StreetView, Gmail...

What I find interesting about Facebook is that it allowed people from the current (and previous) generations to re-connect with people they'd lost touch with since previously there had been no tool designed to easily facilitate reconnecting. Future generations may find they they won't lose those connections since the tools will be in place allowing them to remain in touch as much or as little as they choose. Will they still have the same motivation to re-connect at some point in their lives if that opportunity has always been available to them? There's a very large percentage of Facebook users whose "friends" are really just people they knew back in high school that they connected with on Facebook out of curiosity. It'll be interesting to see if that dynamic continues for future generations.

> Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society.

That's correct. However, the ability to "connect with people from around the world and share content" is, as your parent post notes, is Facebook's "core" functionality. What does Facebook have to show for the engineers they've hired this year, engineers they've hired last year? Are read receipts on Facebook chat more beneficial to "society" than other endeavors the engineers could be working on instead?

Do you really think it's appropriate to compare a 2-days-to-make chat feature with self-driving vehicles and clothes with computers in them?

When Google changes its icons for special occasions is that more beneficial to "society" than other things they could be working. Is ANYTHING people do really the best they could do for society.

I just don't understand why you are holding Facebook to some arbitrary standard.

Actually, Google Doodles educate the society at large about people that made a difference in this world. So yes, work on Google Doodles is beneficial to society.

It is if that service is designed to A) Collect data about the society as a whole in order to B) sell them shit and C) spy on them.