Yep, even the big dogs can't avoid it as a Facebook search won't find this incident but if you Google Facebook Smear you will see a ton of news about what Facebook just did.

Smear Campaign.

Google Facebook Smear Campaign

Right?

WTF!

Hard to see why Facebook would go and snoop this low but I guess if Facebook wanted to fight and become a valid way for people to do Facebook Search queries they were going to be hitting their biggest opponent in the mouth – Google.

So instead of going toe to toe and just winning with good services and advertising Facebook decided to go shady. Real Shady.

Enter in Burson-Marsteller

I saw this on techcrunch and couldn't think of how someone with that much money was able to NOT keep this undercover. The truth has leaked and oh boy…. Google can't be happy about this.

I saw this quote from techcrunch who found it from Daily Beast:

“For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

Facebook Search Failure – Google Knows Now

Maybe back in the day if Facebook was like AOL and WAS the internet this kind of information could have been salvaged and scraped but Google is the definitive word on “searching things” and there has been an explosion of news stories about how Facebook paid for a smear campaign.

See, even the big boy's have issues with their competitors and would even stoop so low.

I wonder if Google will decide to fight back and start pushing the story higher on more keywords so the general audience will know what kind of company Facebook really is.

Google Facebook in a couple days and see if even the generic topics are all dominated by the smear campaign 😉

So what does this really mean? Facebook is not super human and will even act in manners like most human beings do – Low Blows. But in this case it's more like an illegal blow.

Do me a favor and see if you do a Facebook Search with typing in “Google Smear” or “Google Facebook” and see if there are any incidents of the issue or if Facebook is now doing a global block on all negative press on their own website.

So what does this mean to you?

If your in business there is NO need to low blow your competition.  Facebook is worth billions but still wanted to take out their competition. Don't be that person who has to be #1. Remember WHY you got into business.

Is it to be unscrupulous to be #1 or was it to afford you a different type of lifesytle? I hope it's the latter because if so you don't even have to be top 10% and you will be just fine without smearing your competition.