Facebook's Anti-Google Campaign Shows Deepening Divide

Relations between two of the internet's leading lights have grown frosty over a PR campaign to discredit Google.

News that Facebook funded a public-relations campaign to get bloggers and journalists writing about Google's privacy issues highlights the long-brewing battle between two of the internet's biggest players. Facebook, which has a host of its own privacy issues, confirmed that it hired PR firm Burson-Marstellar to plant stories about Google, but denied that it was a smear campaign. Industry analysts say that Google's entry into the social-media market has posed a growing threat to Facebook, indisputably the world's top social network, while Facebook's partnering with Microsoft's search engine Bing last year was seen as an affront to Google.