Confused about Service vs Factory

Question

As I understand it, when inside a factory I return an object that gets injected into a controller. When inside a service I am dealing with the object using this

Answer 1

This would be the best and short answer for understanding Service Vs Factory Vs Provider

Source: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/angular/56sdORWEoqg/HuZsOsMvKv4J

Here what ben says with a demo http://jsbin.com/ohamub/1/edit?html,output

"There are comments in the code illustrating the primary differences but I will expand on them a bit here. As a note, I am just getting my head around this so if I say anything that is wrong please let me know.

Services

Syntax: module.service( 'serviceName', function );

Result: When declaring serviceName as an injectable argument you will be provided the actual function reference passed to module.service.

Usage: Could be useful for sharing utility functions that are useful to invoke by simply appending () to the injected function reference. Could also be run with injectedArg.call( this ) or similar.

Factories

Syntax: module.factory( 'factoryName', function );

Result: When declaring factoryName as an injectable argument you will be provided the value that is returned by invoking the function reference passed to module.factory.

Usage: Could be useful for returning a 'class' function that can then be new'ed to create instances.

Providers

Syntax: module.provider( 'providerName', function );

Result: When declaring providerName as an injectable argument you will be provided the value that is returned by invoking the $get method of the function reference passed to module.provider.

Usage: Could be useful for returning a 'class' function that can then be new'ed to create instances but that requires some sort of configuration before being injected. Perhaps useful for classes that are reusable across projects? Still kind of hazy on this one." Ben