Finally reading up on Facebook’s campaign to smear Google. My first thought was how laughable it is for Facebook to defend this by stating “they’re concerned about Google’s privacy concerns” just makes my head spin. Let’s pretend that this is legitimate. Then it should be done in the open, acknowledging their own issues with managing privacy. Otherwise, you look childish and deceptive. In today’s media saturated space, losing consumer trust can be fatal (not that I think this will kill Facebook. It can be one proverbial nail-in-the-coffin, though).
My impression? This was an attempt at being hyper-competitive and has backfired. Facebook looks childish and grossly unprofessional. Burson-Marsteller (a whole ‘nother post) looks grossly unethical. A bad, bad choice that will add ammunition to the anti-Facebook crowd. There is a point which this energy can obtain critical mass. Facebook needs to work on building up the trust “bank account”, not continuing to draw it down. When it’s empty, the house of cards collapses.