Facebook's Attempts to Malign Google's Reputation Fails

Facebook, the popular social networking platform was in the news early this week for an alleged claim on Symantec blog, wherein users were warned that the social networking giant was squandering away all their private data. While the Symantec private data breach news is still doing the rounds, yet another one emerges which promises to be more venom-inducing.

Bad game! (Image source: The Telegraph)

Facebook has apparently admitted to having hired the popular PR firm, Burson – Marstellar to virtually spy on Google, the search engine giant. Although it didn’t spell out its intentions clearly, Facebook admitted to having asked the agency to highlight all flaws in Google’s privacy policies. Taking a step further, the executives from the PR firm contacted a certain Christopher Soghoian, and asked him if he could write an opinion piece on Google’s privacy in its Social Circles. All this while, the agency did not reveal the name of its client, as per obvious instructions. Attempts to lure Christopher became evident when the agency executives assured great visibility to the opinion piece that he would do, and even offered to do it for him in case he was busy.

Finding the picture to be sketchy, Christopher posted the incident on his blog, and soon the mystery client name was revealed. With this revelation, the tussle between two technology strongholds has just gotten fiercer. The news of Google intending to launch a social networking platform is old. However, Google seems to have run out of luck in this sphere.

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The PR firm has now discontinued its services owing to the breaking of the news.