The thing I found most interesting about this interview is just how badly Peter Norvig has failed to understand what Facebook is all about - I don't use Facebook so that friends can give me recommendations about what camera to buy - I use Facebook because knowing what my friend Sally got up to this weekend is far more interesting to me than what Britney Spears has been up to. I might be interesting in knowing what camera she used to take that brilliant photo of Jim under the fireworks, but that's about as close as it gets.

This has a huge implication for the value of Facebook - they know who I am, really. They know where I live, my age, my sex, and they can even tell what sort of activities I like. Google tries to guess this information from my page view habits, but they often get it wrong, big time. Here's an example - if I get a dating site ad on Facebook it correctly identifies me as a woman and throws up pictures of guys. If that ad is being served up by Google, I get identified as a man because of all the time I spend on tech sites, so the same ad has pictures of women in it. Facebook gives me ads about clothes, Google almost never does. I suspect that Google's core business is at significant risk here. People are spending more and more time in the Facebook universe, those 'Like' buttons have popped up all over the Web, and that spells trouble for Google. It'll be interesting to see how they respond, but I for one won't be buying any more stock in Google for a while.