Facebook Caught Backing “Whisper Campaign” Against Google

Oooohhhh, what you did!!! Facebook, it seems hired a “PR” firm to start a “grass roots” campaign against Google. How naughty!

Facebook, Burson discuss role in Google Circle dispute

“In a stunning mea culpa, Facebook on Thursday admitted that it was behind a whisper campaign to spread privacy fears about Google. Facebook says it never intended to smear the search giant.

Meanwhile, giant public relations firm Burson-Marsteller issued a statement saying it should have never agreed to carry out the assignment on Facebook’s behalf, and that it violated its own policies and procedures to do so. Burson confirmed on Thursday that it no longer works for Facebook.

The admissions follow a Tuesday story in USA TODAY detailing how Burson consultants approached top-tier media companies and high-profile technologists, on behalf of an unnamed client, to seed largely unfounded allegations about privacy shortcomings in Google’s Social Circle service. On Thursday, blogger Dan Lyons, of The Daily Beast, broke a story naming Facebook as Burson’s client.

Facebook issued a statement saying no smear campaign was authorized or intended. ‘We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst,’ the statement said. “The issues are serious, and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way.”

Those developments bring into sharp relief the escalating infighting between high-profile tech companies scratching to extract advertising profits from sensitive information disclosed to them by Internet users.”