Facebook's Embarrassing Secret Campaign To Discredit Google Revealed

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Source: Huffington Post

How not to take on Google: hire a PR firm to spread a secret smear campaign about its privacy policies. That goes double for Facebook, which itself has been the target of serious concerns involving user privacy issues. But that's exactly what Facebook did, according to Dan Lyons of The Daily Beast, who uncovered the social network's covert plan to discredit Google by trying to get bloggers and news outlets to write negative stories about the Palo Alto company.

Burson-Marsteller, a prominent PR firm, was revealed to have sent letters to Christopher Sogohian, an online privacy advocate, pitching him on the idea, and promising to help get the post to news organizations like The Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, and The Huffington Post: I wanted to gauge your interest in authoring an op-ed this week for a top-tier media outlet on an important issue that I know you’re following closely. The topic:

Google’s sweeping violations of user privacy. Google, as you know, has a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America’s Internet users. Not a year has gone by since the founding of the company where it has not been the focus of front-page news detailing its zealous approach to gathering information – in many cases private and identifiable information - about online users.

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To make matters worse for Facebook, USA Today revealed that Burson had also been engaged in a campaign to get media outlets, including USA Today, to run stories on how Google's Social Circle feature is a threat to privacy. Spearheading the campaign were former CNBC anchor Jim Goldman and former political columnist John Mercurio.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/facebook-google-smear_n_860942.html

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Facebook and Google deserve each other.