There are a ton of experiments going on within google related to using your social connections to enhance your google experience. The google experience im talking about is more about ad relevance than it really is about search so let's call a spade a spade. Just like Facebook google wants to know who you friend are and what they like so they can better target ads and provide rich demographic information to their advertisers to help increase their marketing network's perceived value.
Unlike Facebook, Google's "Like" clone will be able to provide a large benefit to consumers as they can use this information to make your search results better. Facebook on the other hand captures all your personal details and "Likes" but doesn't really use it to help you in any way. They might be able to guess what group you might like to be in, maybe recommend you some ads but i can't see any way that they are using all this personal informaiton or your "Likes" to help you in any way besides sharing with your friends.
This is why i would rather use google's "+1" than Facebook's "Like". Both tools will share the fact i liked a link with my friends but Google has the added benefit of increasing my search relevancy and ad relevance across not only google sites but also sites on the content network.
Google's "+1" on search results is not really relevant to me however. If it were an extension or addon or built directiy into chrome so I can +1 a page while im on it rather than having to go back to a search result page afer validating that might make more sense.
To try out the +1 experiment go here:
http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html
If you are getting redirected to your country specific version of google when you enter google.com try adding http://www.google.com/ncr. This will ensure you stay on the US version of google.
Let me know what you think of +1 vs Facebook Like in the comments!
And here is a nice video introduction: