PR firm snarled in Facebook-Google flap

The intense rivalry between Facebook and Google just got juicier.

In a twist seemingly out of a Hollywood thriller, Facebook hired a prominent public relations firm to try to plant in leading news outlets stories harshly criticizing Google's privacy practices. The efforts backfired when the firm approached a blogger who not only declined the assignment, but also went public with the offer.

The latest Silicon Valley drama also has evoked chatter of smear campaigns and secrecy. It took the once-secret blogger known as Fake Steve Jobs to help sort it all out.

One lesson: If you're going to write an incriminating email, don't. Pick up the phone instead.

Here's another: "If you are out there planting negative stories, you are feeding the conflict," said Larry L. Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management, a public relations company. "When they get in a shoving match, whoever is perceived by the public to be the bully loses in the public eye." Rather than getting news outlets to circulate stories about privacy problems facing Google, Facebook found itself having to answer questions about why it wanted to maintain secrecy.

Facebook said it never authorized or intended to run any smear campaign against Google. Rather, the company said it hired Burson-Marsteller to prompt investigations into how a new Google service called Social Circle collects and uses data about people. In a statement, Facebook said it should have made it clear that it was behind the efforts.

Burson-Marsteller said Facebook had requested that its identity remain secret "on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light." The firm said that violated its own policies, "and the assignment on those terms should have been declined." Not that it was.

Facebook's efforts to stay anonymous -- something that violates the terms of service for users of its site -- began to unravel when Burson-Marsteller contacted blogger Christopher Soghoian, an Indiana University graduate student well known in online privacy and security circles.

The firm's John Mercurio asked Soghoian if he wanted to write an item for "a top-tier media outlet" blasting Google for what Mercurio calls a "sweeping violation of user privacy." Soghoian asked for the identity of the firm's client, but Mercurio wouldn't reveal it. Soghoian then posted the email exchange online.

Burson-Marsteller, meanwhile, also pitched USA Today. Instead of running with the planted story, USA Today published an article on the "PR firm's attack of Gmail privacy." It took Newsweek tech editor Dan Lyons to figure out that Burson-Marsteller's mystery client was not Apple or Microsoft, as some murmurs went, but Facebook.

Google and Facebook are Silicon Valley neighbors with similar scrappy roots as start-ups. Over the past few years, however, they have grown more competitive. Google is dominant in advertising that accompanies search results, but Facebook has the potential to draw ad dollars with its extensive knowledge of people's interests and social circles. With little success, Google has urged Facebook to make its data more accessible to its search engine.

Facebook acknowledges that it could have handled the matter better. "The issues are serious, and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way," the company said. Google did not respond to messages for comment.