In one of the more direct challenges to Facebook that he’s ever made publicly, Google CEO Larry Page said that they’re “doing a really bad job on their products.”

The statement came in an interview with Wired. Wired’s Steve Levy asked Page whether Google was motivated by competition in the world of social, which he claimed was a “field dominated by a single rival, Facebook.”

“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,” said Page.

Page didn’t elaborate one which products specifically that he felt Facebook was messing up.

He went on to say that Google is “doing something different,” and that there is plenty of space for more than one company in “these areas.”

The Facebook question was born out of Page’s refusal to accept the “competition” model that he says the media perpetuates with their coverage of Google.

“I worry that something has gone seriously wrong with the way we run companies. If you read the media coverage of our company, or of the technology industry in general, it’s always about the competition. The stories are written as if they are covering a sporting event. But it’s hard to find actual examples of really amazing things that happened solely due to competition. How exciting is it to come to work if the best you can do is trounce some other company that does roughly the same thing? That’s why most companies decay slowly over time,” said Page.

Perhaps the most interesting quip of the entire interview came when asked about Steve Jobs’ declaration about “going to thermonuclear war” on Android.

Page simply replied: “How well is that working?”