The Facebook Smear Campaign Against Google

I read on the BBC website today that Facebook have admitted to paying a PR company to run a smear campaign against Google.

Imagine taking the tactic of rather than paying a PR company to promote you, you pay them to bad mouth your competition? Not an approach I like, or that would win Facebook or the PR company they hired, Burson-Marsteller any fans.

Apparently, according to the BBC, Burson-Marsteller approached a blogger, Chris Soghain, with a story about how Google uses it's User's personal data. When Soghain decided he didn't want to blog about the story, he published his email conversation with Burson-Marsteller instead, who cited they were working on behalf of a client they couldn't name. Admist rumous of it being Microsoft or Apple, another US website investigated it until Facebook was revealed as the client in question.

So this certainly isn't going to mend any bridges between Facebook and Google; the two are known to be at war over how they can share their information about their Users. Maybe it's just as well for us that they don't learn to play nicely like Yahoo and Microsoft? Because between them - they know A LOT about us... so whilst they're both keeping it to themselves and trying to keep the other from getting hold of it, maybe that's better for all of us.