I don't like Facebook, nor do I have an account, but I disagree somewhat with them not being a "real technology company".
Facebook hired Simon Marlow, one of the creators of Haskell, and publishes a lot of research and open-source projects. Cassandra DB, HHVM, React, React-Native and Hack are just a couple examples.
They write blog posts about what scales and what does not, and employ a number of post-grad researchers. How are they not a "real" technology company?
I agree. It's not just software either. Their work on OpenCompute, which opensources datacenter designs and server designs, has also done really impressive work. Their interest in Occulus shows their appreciation of advances in IO hardware.
Facebook is where these techs go to die. Facebook has a lot of interest in these projects, and a lot of cool, smart, motivated people working there. But they have no cohesion, no direction, and no way to build on top of one another - Everyone at Facebook is constantly re-inventing the wheel.
While I do think it is interesting to compare Gmail and Youtube to Facebook, I think you are being down voted for bringing in Android and self driving cars. So is Apple now the big Facebook killer?
- Gmail 1bil users - Youtube billions - Search - Android - Self Driving cars
and the list goes on including an order of magnitude greater in revenue.
Facebook is the friendster, geocities the next AOL etc.
Google is a real technology company.