In Pursuit of Openness: Facebook Admits It Tried to Smear Google on Privacy

At a time when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is being praised for her political deftness, the company appears to have made a serious PR blunder in trying to plant anti-Google privacy stories. Facebook admitted to the Daily Beast Thursday night that it was the client behind an exposed whisper campaign by a PR firm to plant stories about Google social products scraping user data–a concern various people have determined was overblown. More background here and here. Update: Facebook and the PR firm put out statements.