Facebook has admitted that it hired a public-relations firm in the US with the aim of placing stories critical of Google’s approach to privacy in the media.
The embarrassing disclosure is the latest sign of the increasing rivalry between Facebook and Google, as they go head-to-head over internet users’ time and advertisers’ budgets.
Google recently launched a competitor to Facebook’s popular “Like” button, called “+1”, and chief executive Larry Page has indicated the importance of its social media strategy by tying success in the fast-growing area to employee remuneration.
Earlier this week, analyst group Enders published a report forecasting that revenues from Facebook’s display advertising business would overtake sales from the same unit at Google – including YouTube and banners but excluding search and simple text ads – this year.
Both Facebook and Google have come under fire from privacy campaigners and some users for the way they handle personal information. Just this week, Google said it was considering pulling its controversial Street View service from Switzerland amid legal wrangles over privacy. Last year, Facebook faced criticism from groups including the European Commission’s data protection officials when it made its default privacy settings more open.
In recent weeks, Facebook employed the services of Burson-Marsteller, a large public-relations firm owned by WPP whose other clients include Sony Ericsson and Ford. Without revealing the identity of its client, B-M pitched stories and opinion pieces criticising Google’s handling of personal privacy to news outlets including the Washington Post and the Huffington Post.
After details of the anti-Google campaign emerged in USA Today, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed it had hired B-M to the Daily Beast:
Confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman last night 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.
Copies of e-mails to journalists posted on the web appear to show B-M’s PRs pitching stories about “Google’s sweeping violations of user privacy”. The emails accused Google of “violating the personal privacy rights of millions of Americans” and collecting, storing and mining millions of people’s personal information” from other websites including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, “infringing on the privacy rules and rights of hundreds of companies”.
Google declined to comment. A Facebook spokesperson contacted by the FT declined to offer further comment.
Updated: Burson-Marsteller confirmed its assignment for Facebook, saying:
“The client 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.”
