Yep, I remember a line in a news article where someone was of the opinion that "when you're an elephant you can't always avoid stepping on ants" when referring to Google's occasional faux-pas. They may aim to "Do no evil" but sometimes that's unavoidable.
+1 on this. It's interesting (to me at least) to see that FB-presence seems to becoming a must-have for a lot of businesses. Most of the ones I've done biz with this week online have had that "Follow us on Facebook(tm)" link somewhere.
From what I can see it's also an age-related thing, the older you are the more irrelevant FB is (website version of that place in Logan's Run?). Certainly my teenage kid (and her pals) all regard it as a must-have. Me, on the other hand, doesn't think I'm missing anything by being FB-free.
Ask yourself, "if these two companies had to disappear tomorrow, which would you miss most?" and I'm pretty sure that in the majority of folks are going to say "Google".
Didn't Apple and/or Microsoft already try a smear campaign? In which case, how did that turn out?