[ 2011-05-13 ]

Facebook has been accused of hiring a top PR firm to spread anti-Google news to the US press

Facebook hired PR firm to smear Google
London (UK) - 12 May 2011 – The Telegraph -
Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller, a PR company
owned by WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell’s group, to
place negative stories about Google in American
press outlets.Since the admission, Burson
Marsteller has terminated its contract with
Facebook.

Executives from Burson-Marsteller approached a
well known blogger, Christopher Soghoian, who
blogs about security, urging him to investigate
Google’s privacy policy, and in exchange they
would help him get the piece published on
influential sites such as The Huffington Post and
The Washington Post.

Burson-Marsteller even offered to help the blogger
write the piece telling Soghoian: “The American
people must be made aware of the now immediate
intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google
is cataloguing and broadcasting every minute of
every day—without their permission.”

However, Soghoian refused, saying the company was
making a mountain out of a molehill and then
posted the emails online showing what the company
had been trying to do. USA Today then ran with the
piece and accused Burson of spreading a “whisper
campaign” about Google for an unknown client.

Dan Lyons, a writer for The Daily Beast, found
evidence to prove it was Facebook who hired
Burson-Marsteller and Facebook later admitted to
Lyons that it had done so.

He wrote: “Confronted with evidence, a Facebook
spokesman...confirmed that Facebook hired Burson,
citing two reasons: 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.

“Like a Cold War spy case made public, the PR
fiasco reveals—and ratchets up—the growing
rivalry between Google and Facebook. Google, the
search giant, views Facebook as a threat, and has
been determined to fight back by launching a
social-networking system of its own. So far,
however, Google has not had much luck, but
Facebook nonetheless felt it necessary to return
fire—clandestinely.”

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the story and
declined to comment further, while Google declined
to comment.

A spokesman for Burson Marsteller issued the
following statement: "Facebook requested that its
name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely
asking to bring publicly available information to
light and such information could then be
independently and easily replicated by any media.
Any information brought to media attention raised
fair questions, was in the public domain, and was
in any event for the media to verify through
independent sources.

"Whatever the rationale, this was not at all
standard operating procedure and is against our
policies, and the assignment on those terms should
have been declined. When talking to the media, we
need to adhere to strict standards of transparency
about clients, and this incident underscores the
absolute importance of that principle."

Google and Facebook’s rivalry is one of the
biggest between any two major technology companies
at the moment. Both are competing for advertising
pounds and eyeballs online. With Facebook
accounting for an increasing amount of time spent
by people on the web, Google is prioritising its
social strategy.

The search giant has yet to create a significant
social network alternative to Facebook, but newly
installed chief executive and Google co-founder,
Larry Page is supposedly working on a network
called Google Circles. It had been expected to
launch this week at Google’s developer
conference, however no mention was made.

Source - The Telegraph

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