Eric Schmidt (guy who runs Google, if you’re new to this ‘inter-net’ thing) was quoted this week as saying that Google was, in fact, not developing a service to rival Facebook. “The world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing,” he said.

Oh really, Eric? Because be your inescapable charisma and otherworldly good looks as they may, that’s not what I heard. I heard you’re doing exactly the opposite of not creating a Facebook-like service. I heard it’s called Google Me. I heard it’s coming soon. So while you’re for sure the slickest, most hunkalicious snake charmer I’ve ever seen, I gotta go with everybody else on this.

Maybe Schmidt’s just a little jaded. After all, Google has pretty well struck out three times now in the social arena (Orkut, Wave, Buzz), – it’s entirely possible he’s just shielding his ass in the event Google is developing another bomb. But Google is definitely in talks with Playdom, EA, and Zynga (the latter of which Google has even funded), so it would seem that for its next trick, Google’s definitely got something Facebook in scale up its sleeve. And it makes sense: more and more advertising revenue is being eaten by social networking, Google would be positively daffy not to try again.

Fourth time’s a charm, right Eric?