Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

Usually this means things like 'if the boss is ten minutes late to every meeting, staff will assume it's acceptable for everyone to be ten minutes late to a meeting'.

Given Zuckerbeg's reputation for sneaky behaviour and this example of his PR team, I now have an excellent example to share in the future: 'If the boss uses sneaky, underhanded and/or arrogant methods to launch 'his' business, staff will assume it's acceptable for them to use sneaky underhanded and/or arrogant methods to promote it'.

And, as someone said above, Facebook professing a concern for abuse of privacy is a bit much to swallow.

I was going to comment as such on his blog...

...but I don't have a facebook account. ;)

It makes you wonder about the existing op-eds slamming social circles[3,4,5]

   [1] http://www.dubfire.net/
   [2] http://pastebin.com/zaeTeJeJ
   [3] http://www.switched.com/2010/08/09/google-shows-off-how-well-it-knows-your-social-circle/
   [4] http://marketing.about.com/b/2011/03/31/google-wants-you-to-1.htm
   [5] http://librarianbyday.net/2010/03/30/googles-social-circle-social-search-may-not-violate-any-privacy-laws-but-it-gives-me-the-creeps/

First, because it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, because Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.

So, just to get this straight: Facebook resents that Google use's "Facebook data" in Social Circles, when I as the user have to explicitly allow Google to import my Facebook connections? Shouldn't the user get a say in how their data is used and who uses it?

I mean, did they think it would be a tremendous leap of the imagination for the court of public opinion and/or regulators to ask themselves "Hey, so Google is sketchy on user data...hmm...I wonder what other company might have a boatload of such data?"

I wonder how employees feel about it - is it just business as usual? For that matter, I wonder how would-be investors feel about it.

Google defeated competition from Microsoft and Yahoo with innovation and hard work, not with slimy tactics. They dazzled the world by being open, provocative, fast and effective, forward-thinking, pushing web apps to their limits, giving customers what they wanted.

Is this it? Is Facebook the next Google? How depressing.

Then again, the kind of people who are most likely to be affected by this entire affair are also the kind of people who already know this information about both companies. So maybe this will have little overall effect?

As for the PR firm's offering to help write an article... Well, I would call it bad/unethical journalism if such an article were published as reporting. If it were published on some opinion page or like a tech blog, that would be fine.

If anything an article like this makes me lose face for techcrunch, who acts like this kind of PR tactic has never happened before.

If you don't believe me read Toxic Sludge, which is a book about the PR industry.

I was an intern at Facebook last summer, so I had a great time there. Color me naive, but I don't feel the executives' personalities were "sneaky," probably because I interacted with them in person. I didn't see anything that suggested they would endorse this type of tactic.

With that said, I'd like to believe that it was all a misunderstanding, that perhaps this John guy isn't really affiliated with Facebook (his email is @bm.com), or that this was the mistake of an individual. I sincerely hope that it wasn't an organizational effort to smear Google, because I don't see why they'd need to.

When I was at Facebook, they were supremely confident about being able to snip Google's entry, that they would demoralize Google and make them cry. After all, I was in a sea of brilliant engineers, many of whom understand Google intimately through years of service, and we just needed sheer engineering and better products to win.

Perhaps Facebook just thought it was unfair that it was getting all of the negative light on privacy and wanted to share the blame with someone. But I really don't know, and I'm waiting for an official answer.

I really hope it's good, because I am surprised by this maneuver, to say the least. Maybe the answer is "Google does this too!" But then I would just be doubly disappointed.

The general idea that I got about the management of Facebook is that they are a very confident bunch of guys who know what they are doing- since they have spurned many offers to buy them out. This story however kind of conflicts with the idea I had.

Perhaps Facebook's managers think themselves exempt from the changing privacy norms they keep telling us to accept?

Also ‘privacy’?! I hope the irony isn’t lost on anyone. It wasn't very well thought-out, as when a net privacy panic starts spreading like wildfire through the media the consequences in political grandstanding and potential legislative action would hurt them as well.

So they come out of this looking like data-locking propaganda spreading assholes. Good job!

Referenced article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-12/fa...

Personifying these companies and then writing gossip stories about them is turning what should be real business into some kind of pseudo-fashion magazine.

Just as little as I care for Snookie kissing JWoww, do I care about Facebook spying on google. The impact of this is minimally negligible in the world of real business, and something like this is just pointless gossip.