Facebook admits PR attack campaign on Google
Facebook was left red-faced on Thursday after acknowledging it had hired a prominent public relations firm to draw attention to privacy practices at Internet rival Google.
The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, said meanwhile that it had taken on an assignment for Facebook on the condition that it not reveal the name of its client and that it should not have done so
Facebook's clumsy PR effort was first revealed by the website The Daily Beast, which said Burson-Marsteller had reached out to a number of U.S. news outlets urging them to look into claims Google was invading privacy
Facebook, which has struggled with privacy controversies of its own, said in a statement to AFP that it had hired Burson-Marsteller but insisted that
"no 'smear' campaign was authorized or intended."
Facebook said it hired Burson-Marsteller to "focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst."