The best of enemies

By M.G. | SAN FRANCISCO

IT IS an open secret in the tech world that Google and Facebook are hardly the best of friends. But now their relations are going to sink to a new low. According to numerous reports appearing today, Burson-Marsteller, a public-relations company working for Facebook has been urging bloggers and journalists to write scathing pieces about the way in which Social Circle, a Google offering that lets users share search results and other stuff with their friends, violates users' privacy. The Financial Times's website quotes Burson-Marsteller as saying that Facebook had asked the PR firm not to reveal who it was working for. The agency admitted that agreeing to this "was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined." USA Today is carrying the same statement from the PR firm.

There is no shortage of irony in all this. It is true that Google hardly has a stellar track record on privacy matters. The company's Google Buzz social network came under fire when it was launched for using people's Gmail contacts without their permission. And Google found itself in the middle of another stink when its Street View street-mapping service was caught "sniffing" (accidentally, Google has claimed) data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks. In March the firm reached a settlement with America's Federal Trade Commission that requires it to submit to regular external audits of its approach to privacy issues.

But Facebook is no angel either on privacy matters. In particular, it got its fingers badly burnt with its Beacon service, which shared people's activities on the web with their contacts. This case eventually led to Facebook having to cough up millions of dollars to resolve litigation brought against it for violating their privacy. It has also been bashed repeatedly by privacy activists for using default settings in its privacy controls that mean users' data is automatically shared broadly over the web unless they change them.

Indeed, Facebook's reputation is arguably even worse than Google's in this area—which may explain why, rather than concentrating on improving its own act, it has chosen to pay third parties to take a pop at Google instead. This Babbage's coverage of Facebook's shortcomings (eg, here) may explain why Burson-Marsteller left him off its call list. It is possible that Google may have some questions to answer about Social Circle's approach to data-sharing. But for now, it is Facebook that has egg all over its face.