London, May 12 (ANI): Facebook has admitted to hiring a 'sleazy tactics' PR firm to promote negative stories about search engine 'Google,' insisting that it compromised users' privacy.
Facebook chiefs had reportedly asked Burson-Marsteller to start a secret campaign by planting negative stories in newspapers.
"We wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Social Circle, just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose," the Daily Mail quoted a Facebook spokesman, as saying.
"We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organisation or analyst. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way," he added.
The plan, however, was disclosed when Burson-Marsteller approached U.S. privacy advocate Christopher Soghoian, asking him to write a blog about Social Circle.
The aim was to get the write-up published in high-profile newspapers including the Washington Post, and also included a negative assessment about Google, saying it had "a well-known history of infringing privacy rights".
It said Social Circle was "designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users".
Soghoian however, demanded to know who was behind the story, and when Burson-Marsteller refused to reveal the name, he published its emails online.
Matthew Ingram, of the technology analyst GigaOm, said Facebook's actions shows 'desperation' to control the market.
"Large corporations hiring PR companies to plant negative articles in the press about their competitors isn't exactly a new phenomenon. But this is the first sign that Facebook has taken to using these sleazy tactics against Google," he added. (ANI)
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