We noticed this when starting out company (which measures these stats for your blog), and it never struck me as odd. Sure it seems a little disingenuous at first, but the Like button has replaced the Share button as the preferred implementation. Moreover, every like, share, or comment gets posted to your wall for your friends to see (privacy settings depending) so you are in fact "recommending" it.
The difficulty with that is that some comments actually contest the information in the article. For example, if someone commented on my blog post and said "This is bogus, the like number is accurate" ... I would hardly call that a recommendation.
In Czech localization, the button actually says translation of "recommended", as do the message that gets on you wall by using it. On the other hand, comments, wallposts pages and what not use wording with equivalent of "like".
