In an interview with Wired magazine last month, Google chief Larry Page pulled no punches when quizzed over the workings of his own company - and that of his tech rivals.

The 39-year-old Page co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998 at Stanford University. Larry Page took over as chief executive in April 2011, and though this interview was held some time before Facebook's Graph Search announcement, Page's comments regarding Zuckerberg's network are telling.

Wired: One area where people say that Google is indeed motivated by competition is the social realm, where in the past two years you have been working hard in a field dominated by a single rival, Facebook. That’s not the case?
Page: It’s not the way I think about it. We had real issues with how our users shared information, how they expressed their identity, and so on. And, yeah, they’re a company that’s strong in that space. But they’re also doing a really bad job on their products. For us to succeed, is it necessary for some other company to fail? No. We’re actually doing something different. I think it’s outrageous to say that there’s only space for one company in these areas. When we started with search, everyone said, “You guys are gonna fail, there’s already five search companies.” We said, “We are a search company, but we’re doing something different.” That’s how I see all these areas.

With questions over Google+ popularity and utility and Google themselves embroiled in an anti-trust investigation with the EU, the outspoken Page obviously isn't out to make friends in the ultra-competitive tech market.