Google and Facebook are in a battle for the next generation of Internet which is all about making it more social (i.e. The network adapts to human requirements instead of people being constrained by network limitations). Facebook has already started to respond to Google’s initiative to include more functional privacy features such as circles (not everyone is your “friend”) but the next big improvement would be support for federation. Federation would be at least one part of true openness where users of social networks would be able to communicate with users of other social networks instead of being locked-in to only communicate with users of the same social network.
Infographic by Veracode Application Security