That’s a huge ambition for a company that, so far, haven’t been able to get their own web site to work properly.

How often can you remember logging in to Facebook and, at some point, seeing an error message? News Feed broken, can’t upload photos, apps that are working on a fix, links not working, posts being shown in the wrong order. The list goes on. I’d guess that there’s about a 2% error rate when navigating Facebook. What if it was the same for Google?

Count how many searches you do each day – 5, 10, 50, 100, 1000? It doesn’t really matter. Now, what if 1 in 50 of those searches there was an issue. You search for “Ryan Giggs” and get a smiling picture of “Drogba”. Or you see an error. Or it takes 20 seconds for the page to load. Or maybe nothing at all happens and you just see a blank page. Would you still use Google or would you find somewhere new to search?

The only issue with that theory, as things stand, is that there isn’t really an alternative to Facebook. MySpace is horrid. Bebo never really had what it takes… which other social network is your gran likely to have heard of? I can’t think of one.

At some point though, Facebook won’t be the new kid on the block who can get away with being a bit naughty. I already get the sense that it’s starting to happen (just from listening to users who are blatantly aware that Facebook breaks and that it’s very unlikely to change) so all that’s needed now is for a new golden boy to come along and do things better.

Until then we’ll rise to the challenge with workarounds, polite explanations and immense frustrations. It’s worth it though. For now.