Facebook secret scam

A very interesting story is unfolding right before our eyes, connected with the two largest Internet companies of our time: Google and Facebook.

The Daily Beast published interesting details of how Facebook secretly hired one of the most famous PR offices of Silicon Valley to propagate negative news about Google in general, and their privacy policy in particular. Dan Lyons explains the details.
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“Over the past few days, an interesting mystery has been revealed here in Silicon Valley. There was a lasting impression that someone hired Burson-Marsteller , which is a top public relations firm, to find and escalate anti-Google publications to magazines, newspapers and other publications, forcing them to write on the topic of that Google violates user privacy. Burson even tried to hire an influential blogger to publish a review article on the subject, promising to place the publication in The Washington Post, Politico and The Huffington Post.

The whole story was scattered when the blogger (Chris Soghoian) refused Burson-Marsteller and posted the correspondence between him and the company representative who contacted him. The explosion happened when USA Today published a note accusing Burson of "a whisper campaign" (as they call black PR in the US) against Google, ordered by an unnamed client. "

All correspondence is available for reading here .

It is worth noting that all this hype ensued around a single product - Social Circle, a Google service that allows GMail users to get access to information on the so-called. “secondary connections” are data about friends of friends. This service was the epicenter of the hate attack.

In their address to journalists and bloggers, representatives of the PR-company Burson describe the product in an apocalyptic way: "The American people should know how deeply Google has got into their personal lives, cataloging and distributing data every minute of every day, without your knowledge."

Sogoyan (Chris Soghoian - the blogger whom Burson tried to hire) decided that the company was trying to “make an elephant out of a fly” and decided to find out on whose order this order was being carried out by directly asking the customer name of Burson. There, his question, naturally, was left unanswered.

Finally, the story found its roots when a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the company hired Burson to do the dirty work. There are two reasons for this: 1. Facebook sincerely believes that Google violates generally accepted privacy standards; 2. Facebook "believes" that Google may "incorrectly use data obtained from Facebook users." To paraphrase, Facebook considers themselves to be not only altruists, but also advocates of the entire Internet.

Meanwhile, Google did not respond to this statement, noting only that it takes a little more time to draw conclusions. This is “no comment” in the style of google.

Considering this situation in retrospect, we can draw several far-reaching conclusions. First, such aggressive behavior not only speaks of cowardice, it also hints at the lack of a brain in the marketing department of Facebook. It is impossible to assume that they seriously expected to remain “anonymous” - to whom, if not the representatives of the largest social network, know that any information, with due attention, very quickly becomes open.

Secondly, now the entire Internet knows that Facebook is afraid of Google and products that make up the latest company. And this is perhaps the most surprising, because Facebook definitely has nothing to fear, never. Super self-confidence is a trait of Zuckerberg's character that has spread throughout the company. Apparently, these waves do not reach the marketing department.

Thirdly, we now know that Facebook can play a dirty game. Trusting them in the future will be even more difficult, not only for users, but also for business partners.

And finally, the last - criticism of Google, perhaps even was partly justified. But it doesn't matter anymore, because now all the stones will fly towards Palo Alto, not Mountain View (Google headquarters).

The truth of this whole story lies in the fact that Google probably, even most likely, really violates the terms of use of Facebook, sucking out user data from there. But many, including yours truly, agree that all user data, including social graphs, belong to users, not Facebook. And regardless of what happens, the user is not involved in this process (I do not toss over at night at the thought that Google is now analyzing my profile in the social network). The problem here is that Facebook considers this data as its private property.

You've lost much face today, Facebook © TechCrunch

via Engadget