Friday, May 13, 2011

Cyber War: Facebook's Google smear campaign outed

Cyber wars spill over into the mainstream media more often than ever these days. Now Facebook, working hard to shore up its own reputation as a company that plays loose with users' privacy, admits to using a PR firm to spread malicious information about Google's privacy practices to the media.

The social networking giant has been trying to get newspapers and websites to run stories saying that the search giant is invading users' privacy. Those bad boys and girls. What will they do next? It’s really a nasty little battle they have going, complete with people defecting from one company and going to the other one.

Dan Lyons, of The Daily Beast, said that when "confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman last night confirmed" that the company hired PR giant Burson-Marsteller to do the dirty work. USA Today, which was pitched as well by the PR firm, looked into the story, and found it meritless, that "the claims were exaggerated," said Lyons.     Photo source

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