So, by now lots of people have heard that Facebook hired a PR firm to shill against Google on the basis of "Google invading your privacy and giving your information away"...

Rather interesting subject matter considering that Facebook absolutely adores doing this very thing... "monetizing" your contacts in Facebook by handing out a great deal of your personal information to anything you "Like" (or to anyone smart enough to bypass their questionable security filtering).

It seems to me that Facebook is likely attempting to capitalize on the nonsense left over from the mess that was the Google Maps vehicles literally picking up wireless confetti, in an attempt to use the court of public opinion to get the FTC to sternly forbid Google from doing anything remotely like what Facebook makes their money doing. (...and it's not like this would be the first time Google has been attacked this way!) Elimination of competition by government action? True innovation!

Since the actual "spoiler" story broke I've seen signs that a few major news outlets actually did take the bait and published articles critical of what Google is doing with Social Search (I guess they didn't get the memo that the jig is up)... and then a few minutes ago I spotted USA Today's article, which really takes the cake for slanted reporting. They stop just short of outright lies but they really go a long way to swing that double-standard--berating Google for doing things they've subtly misrepresented and in the next paragraph lauding Facebook for doing even more of the same thing. They even engage in the timeless tactic of not actually saying nasty things, but instead simply quoting J. Random Asshole's comments about it, even if J. Random Asshole just learned about the situation from the reporter that asked them a handful of minutes before. I think the best part is how they use an article exposing this sort of smear campaign to actually engage in their own smearing.

Here's some nice blockquotes that are probably lawyer-bait, but what the hell... There's no use talking about something like this unless you can point to specific examples:

Let's start with the byline:

It's not as if Google lacks privacy controversies to quell.

Well, I suppose if you count the manufactured controversies at hand and whatever the hell just went down in Korea, then you've got two, possibly three controversies. Notice how they don't come out and make an accusation, when stating that there's not a lack of rumors can say so very much more. Cheap, and just as effective as saying "It's not as if your sister's never been called a whore."

Just an inch below that (you can't really call them paragraphs, can you?) we have:

Google said that Social Circle in fact allows Gmail users to make social connections based on public information and private connections across its ... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]