Facebook has come clean this week, admitting to secretly hiring a PR firm that planted negative stories about Google in newspapers and websites.
The social networking giant hired top-5 PR firm Burson-Marsteller to tell newspaper editors to investigate into whether Google was invading the privacy of its users.
Burson-Marsteller even offered to help noted blogger Christopher Soghoian write an op-ed that would have bashed Google. The PR firm promised the story could be placed later in the Huffington Post and the Washington Post. Soghoian instead released all the emails and declined the offer.
While many believed the "unnamed client" was either Apple or Microsoft, it turns out Facebook has an ax to grind and hates the fact that Google is trying to use Facebook data in its own social-networking services, like Social Circle.
Social Circle lets Gmail users see info about their Google and Facebook friends, but also their "secondary connections," or friends of friends.
The PR firm, in its smear campaign, was telling journalists that Social Circle is:
Burson-Marsteller even offered to help noted blogger Christopher Soghoian write an op-ed that would have bashed Google. The PR firm promised the story could be placed later in the Huffington Post and the Washington Post. Soghoian instead released all the emails and declined the offer.
While many believed the "unnamed client" was either Apple or Microsoft, it turns out Facebook has an ax to grind and hates the fact that Google is trying to use Facebook data in its own social-networking services, like Social Circle.
Social Circle lets Gmail users see info about their Google and Facebook friends, but also their "secondary connections," or friends of friends.
The PR firm, in its smear campaign, was telling journalists that Social Circle is:
Designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users—in a direct and flagrant violation of [Google's] agreement with the FTC.
The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day—without their permission.
