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Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

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Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#142

Wow, just wow! I wonder how employees feel about it - is it just business as usual? For that matter, I wonder how would-be investors feel about it. Google defeated competition from Microsoft and Yahoo with innovation and hard work, not with slimy tactics. They dazzled the world by being open, provocative, fast and effective, forward-thinking, pushing web apps to their limits, giving customers what they wanted. Is thi…

I'm pretty sure Facebook employees have been provided some rationalization about it - for example, "Google is pushing a creepy feature and stealing our content, we are just trying to make it public". Believe me, when you have $$$ riding on a side, believing their version of truth is extremely easy to do so, thats human psychology.

If Facebook protected users from everyone, it would be totally acceptable.

But, every ad company and security organization has access to Facebook's data. They are bitching about Google?

"Its ok if you're going to screw with my users, just dont compete me"

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#145
post #116
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'm shocked my the downvotes being levied against all of these "who cares" type posts. How much face is really being lost by Facebook? The audience of Facebook users that will read about the "negative PR campaign" will be infantesimally small (compared to their near 500 million accounts). Then compare that infantesimally small number of users to the percentage who didn't already know that Facebook was dodgy…

Note that at least in France, this made the front page on the website of all major newspaper (Le Monde, Liberation, etc.). It's probably the same in many european country where Facebook is sometimes struggling to keep a clean image.

Look at me and my Ethnocentricity! How true that there are other cultures where these services are still trying to get traction and expose's like this one can have an actual impact.

Thanks for pointing that out :)

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#146
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I now have an excellent example to share in the future Your comment intuitively seems correct, and I'm inclined to agree with you. But I can't help but wonder if you just end up picking examples that support this claim. Most examples of corporate wrong-doing probably can't be correlated with traits of their CEO (they're just mistakes made by inept, or possibly malicious, individuals or groups). Statistically, some…

Saying that the "head" has to be the CEO is taking it too far. In most large companies, you are only aware of the behaviour of the two levels of management above you. If you see your boss or your bosses boss behave in a certain way, you will think that this behaviour is acceptable. For example, the CEO of some bank might be very long-term, risk free, investement oriented, but if the boss of the trading desk only care…

Recursively applying the "pay attention to the two levels above you" rule gets us to "the CEO sets the corporate culture."

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#147
post #14

I wonder what the ex googlers who moved to FaceBook think of such slimy tactics. Might be interesting to hear the perspective of someone who moved from a company that (at least) professes an adherence to "Don't be evil" to a company that apparently has no problems with jumping into the slime. If I worked for Facebook, I'd be ashamed of my employer today (and would probably protest and then get fired!). And, as someon…

I wonder what the ex googlers who moved to FaceBook think of such slimy tactics stock options non olet , I guess...

_Olent_, optiones facultatum non _olent_. Stock options are plural.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#148
post #91

Color me perplexed by Facebook's move here. Not only is the blowback from this effort bad PR, but I fail to see what FB stood to gain from this in the first place. Generating a bunch of bad publicity and calling attention to Google's alleged invasions of privacy is just going to bring scrutiny down upon FB eventually -- regardless of whether or not this plot ever came to light. I mean, did they think it would be a tr…

For there to be negative-PR blowback on this, the user-base will have to pull their heads out of their asses and stop playing FarmVille for five minutes. Even then, chances are they'll shrug and go back to harvesting self-esteem from their facebook "friends".

Luckily, a tech company like Facebook lives and dies by its reputation with not just its users but also, among other groups, the developer community.

Look at how much posturing companies put into looking like 'cool' places to work, in order to attract top technical talent. At this point in time I think any prospective Facebook hire will be thinking long and hard about whether the technical challenges and money are worth selling his soul to what appears to be the douchiest internet company around.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#149
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah ... and that is why I can't leave comments =)

If you seriously don't have a Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail or AOL account, but do have a Google account, you really ought to take a step out of Google's back pocket and sign up for one of the other huge services on the internet.

I have an Facebook account, but I refuse to use my Facebook account. It is strictly for keeping in touch with friends, not for me to use to sign in to random services, and least of all to use outside of Facebook to leave comments. I have OpenID, and a Google account, those I can use to leave comments, or just give me a couple of text boxes, I'll fill in my name, email and website and comment and click submit like I have always done it.

Facebook is the last company I am going to voluntarily hand more data over to by using their commenting system on various sites.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#150

Kudos to Christopher Soghoian[1] for releasing the email[2] instead of accepting the offer for cash + high-profile smear publication. It makes you wonder about the existing op-eds slamming social circles[3,4,5] [1] http://www.dubfire.net/ [2] http://pastebin.com/zaeTeJeJ [3] http://www.switched.com/2010/08/09/google-shows-off-how-well-it-knows-your-social-circle/ [4] http://marketing.about.com/b/2011/03/31/google-wan…

Shit, it was Christopher Soghoian? Whoever thought that he would participate in a pay-for-editorial job should be fired. Actually, they have almost certainly already been fired. He's practically built a career on exposing corporate bullshit. If they bothered to read his wikipedia page, they'd note that he has a history of releasing private corporate correspondance that is sent to him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chr…

Dollars or street cred - I wonder which the blogger will choose? :)
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