Personally, I don't see Google+ as an FB clone either. Awarding FB the 'rights' to social networking features is reminiscent of a non-deserved software patent -

Personally, I don't see Google+ as an FB clone either. Awarding FB the 'rights' to social networking features is reminiscent of a non-deserved software patent - the functionality of FB is not unprecedented, non-obvious or original. Their success is in bringing it all together in one place successfully. Talking to friends and sharing materials with them is a natural way that people are going to use the internet. When I heard about G+ my thoughts were along the same lines as the recent posts from MySpace's founder. Google has offered these services for years, but they have not been well integrated with each other or presented as a unified product. Overall Picasa, Buzz, Profiles and so on have not been branded or marketed well. Putting these together makes sense. I'm glad Google has done it and I'm pleased to see it's being well received. What seems new for Google is how this is a 'real identity' network. There's a key difference between communities where one can choose between a real name, anonymity or a pseudonym, exemplified by sites likes on YouTube, Reddit or your average random web forum, vs. the Facebook style where policy requires that you use your given name and have a single identity. Each style engenders a different dynamic, and has benefits or drawbacks. Maintaining the right to and acceptance anonymity on the internet is a quite important cultural issue in my opinion, however. I definitely agree that Google and MS are very different companies, personality wise. MS's style is to copy competitors products, cargo-cult style, but miss the overall point. They seekt want to eliminate competition without really caring about the original point of the product - IE was just one in a long line of examples of this. They definitely don't care about improving the product after they eliminate the original, I suppose because the product or what it did was never the point. I don't think Google is like that at all... A company's behavior so often reflects the behavior of the people who run it at a high level, and the two founders of Google are not at all like Gates or Ballmer.