Better groups anyone?

Why aren't the social networking and groups applications merging? The functionality, not the companies. What does Y! Groups or Google Groups do that's not possible in Facebook? Ok, so they're good ways to blast a bunch of emails around between people of like interest, but they could be so much more... and they're not. Why?

It seems that if Y! just joined Flickr, 360 and del.icio.us with their Groups product and stirred it up a bit they'd have such a nice offering. Probably too much dysfunction these days to pull that one off.

I predict that what we think of as "social networking" apps and what we should expect from "groups" apps will soon start to blend to a point where end-users will not (and should not) see a difference.