After months of speculation, Google has launched a social network to rival Facebook. Google today unveiled its Google+ project, a social networking service that looks and functions very much like Facebook . The two Internet giants have been increasingly competitive and with today's announcement, Google is taking a giant step directly onto Facebook's business . "Among the most basic of human needs is the need to connect with others," wrote Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president, engineering, in a blog post . "Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it."