Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear Attempt on Google

I wonder how they can say this with a straight face:

a Facebook spokesman last night confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: First, because it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns

Thanks - this is a more informative article than the TechCrunch post which was on the front page.

Yeah really. Great counterexample to the people here who claim that HN voting is primarily about the content of the article. The TechCrunch article had a better headline, broader readership in the HN crowd, and a more techy URL ... so it pulled in the votes.

Agreed, another example of a larger tech blog picking up on reporting done by somebody else and garnering most of the attention/upvotes. The TC article had no real value-add on top of the reporting that Dan Lyons did, but it has more name-recognition on HN so apparently gets to lead the story. Frustrating!

This came across HN just yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2532759

Yes, but this article unmasked Facebook as the 'undisclosed client'

Is it a smear if the allegations are true?