When I heard this story, I was more saddened than anything else. Frankly, there’s no love lost between Facebook and I – I don’t find the service quite the panacea communications platform that so many other people do, but I do have some love for Google, and think that they have some of the smartest people working on the coolest technology that can actually improve our lives of any tech company (and I don’t just say that because I almost joined them.)

Facebook, on the other hand, is the epitome of a tech company and brand that lives, breathes, and exists to make as much money off of the backs of their users while consistently keeping them controlled, monitored, managed, and herded. Facebook lives to eat their data and all of their personal information and then sell it to the highest bidder under the guise of keeping people “connected” and “in touch” with the ones they care about.

I’m not saying Google doesn’t do similar things, or want to eat our data and sell it all as well – but at least they offer something back in exchange, even if you don’t think it’s a fair trade.

All that aside, when I heard the news that Facebook had hired a PR firm to start releasing media advisories and spreading FUD about Google, I was pretty livid. They could have done the same thing and called it avertising or marketing, and that would have been fine in a way – at least they would have been above board. Instead, Facebook went undercover, using a PR firm as their front, with instructions not to divulge their connections. That’s just underhanded.

Like I said on Twitter, I don’t know what’s funnier, the fact that Google’s the good guy here, or the fact that Facebook is actually pretending it gives a damn about privacy.

[ Facebook Hired PR Firm to Run Smear Campaign Against Google ]