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The new cold war: Facebook vs Google

J

JS80

Lifer
What a bunch of dbags http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...ook-busted-in-clumsy-smear-attempt-on-google/

The social network secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about the search giant, The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons reveals—a caper that is blowing up in their face, and escalating their war.

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

But who was the mysterious unnamed client? While fingers pointed at Apple and Microsoft, The Daily Beast discovered that it's a company nobody suspected—Facebook.
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i absolutely love this snippet from facebook rep:

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;...
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What was the point of this? Did Facebook want to divert attention away from privacy concerns regarding its own site? Did they want the ability to say "SEE! Google does it too!"?
 
This is actually pretty fascinating. I bet anonymous corporate mudslinging is an excellent business opportunity. If you can spread negative publicity covertly, I bet you can make some serious money doing so.
 
So how are they competing with each other?

One is a social network and the other a search engine more or less.

Unless google starts their own social network I don't see the point.

Granted they both have been caught stealing your information but don't see the issue between them.
 
smartpatrol said:
This is actually pretty fascinating. I bet anonymous corporate mudslinging is an excellent business opportunity. If you can spread negative publicity covertly, I bet you can make some serious money doing so.
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Haha, yeah. Is this a common service that public-relations firms provide?
 
Newbian said:
So how are they competing with each other?

One is a social network and the other a search engine more or less.

Unless google starts their own social network I don't see the point.

Granted they both have been caught stealing your information but don't see the issue between them.
Click to expand...

As data converges towards Facebook and away from the internet, FB will be able to have enough to warrant its own search engine. As eyeballs converge towards FB, the thesis is it will eventually take away from Google. Searching for Tide detergent page for some info? No need to search on Google, Proctor and Gamble made a FB page for Tide. http://www.facebook.com/Tide?ref=ts
 
Hah, when I heard about the mystery company that hired that PR firm to spread stuff about Google, I assumed Apple had done it. I guess Facebook makes sense, but they really don't compete with Google as much as the Google-Apple-Microsoft menage a trois competes.

As I recall, some of the Facebook privacy issues were misrepresented by sensationalist pseudo-journalists (bloggers). Like when they converted stuff on your profile to "pages" - they were essentially removing a useless feature and making it useful, and you had to opt in to the pages that you actually wanted to join - they just made the suggestions. But bloggers misrepresented it as a way to provide more data to advertisers.
 
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JS80 said:
As data converges towards Facebook and away from the internet, FB will be able to have enough to warrant its own search engine. As eyeballs converge towards FB, the thesis is it will eventually take away from Google. Searching for Tide detergent page for some info? No need to search on Google, Proctor and Gamble made a FB page for Tide. http://www.facebook.com/Tide?ref=ts
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I dont think fb can rival the vast wealth of information that's out there on the internet, and thus, open to google. I really don't think people go on fb first to search for commercial products. Nor will people go on facebook to search for "how to edit photographs like a pro in photoshop"
 
Aharami said:
I dont think fb can rival the vast wealth of information that's out there on the internet, and thus, open to google. I really don't think people go on fb first to search for commercial products. Now will people go on facebook to search for "how to edit photographs like a pro in photoshop"
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Of course not, my point was that they have the potential to encroach on their space and can take market share away from Google. This is a real threat for Google. In the future if I want to search for detergent brands, I may not search on Google by default. I may just search on FB.
 
Newbian said:
So how are they competing with each other?

One is a social network and the other a search engine more or less.

Unless google starts their own social network I don't see the point.

Granted they both have been caught stealing your information but don't see the issue between them.
Click to expand...

Like this?
Sure it's not big in the US but global markets count too.
 
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