Facebook doing a 'really bad job', says Google CEO

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Facebook doing a 'really bad job', says Google CEO

By Seth Fiegerman

This post was originally published on Mashable.

Google CEO Larry Page had some harsh words for Facebook during a rare interview with Wired published on Thursday.

"They're also doing a really bad job on their products" ... Google CEO Larry Page on Facebook.

"They're also doing a really bad job on their products" ... Google CEO Larry Page on Facebook.

When asked about Google's motivations for competing with Facebook in the social networking space, Page didn't mince words. "They're a company that's strong in that space," he said. "But they're also doing a really bad job on their products."

Page didn't elaborate on the reasons he thinks the company is doing a bad job, or which products he was referring to in particular, but it is still one of the more direct criticisms Page has levelled against Facebook to date. In the past, Page has also criticised Facebook for being closed with its data. The latest remarks happen to come just a couple days after Facebook launched a smarter search engine called Graph Search, which some say could be an early step to competing more directly with Google.

That said, Page noted that Google doesn't need Facebook to fail as a company in order for it to succeed in social. "We're actually doing something different," Page said. "I think it's outrageous to say that there's only space for one company in these areas." The CEO also said he's "very happy" with Google+ so far while poking Facebook a little in process: "A lot of it has been copied by our competitors, so I think we're doing a good job."

Aside from talking about Google+, Page talked about the need to keep the company ambitious with "moon shot" ideas and teased the possibility that Google could eventually have 1 million employees working for it. "Imagine what we could do if we had a hundred times as many employees," he said.

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Page also appeared to scoff at Steve Jobs' desire to wage a so-called thermonuclear war against Android. "How well is that working?" he said.

Mashable is the largest independent news source covering digital culture, social media and technology.

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