I received a bit of feedback from some people suggesting that I might be coming across as biased against Google. Do they disappoint me on a regular basis with poor business decisions, poor development direction, and poor dedication to their core product? Absolutely. Could that change? Also, absolutely.
So to provide a bit of balance to my discourse on Google, I offer you, ‘Facebook is Dumb Too’.
I think a lot of this goes back to the personality of the man at the top. Zuckerberg’s history as the leader of the company is tainted with lots of stories, accusations, and lawsuits. The image that presents is of someone who is careless, self-centered, and operating under the belief that nothing that they do wrong sticks.
The recent smear campaign effort with Google is just another feather in that cap.
The campaign shows a blatant disregard for business ethics, public relations strategies, and tech methodologies.
First and foremost, why try the back door approach to smearing Google. Everyone knows that you two don’t get along. I’ve been publishing it in my Google vs. Facebook posts for a while, and a lot of other people are too. There is no surprise to the fact that you want their business and they want yours. There wasn’t any need for you to target them with a back stabbing maneuver. You could have publicly stated that your privacy policy was better than Google’s and you were more concerned about user privacy than they were. Release a new user friendly privacy policy in coordination and openly throw down the gauntlet.
Secondly, when has a public relations campaign ever been quiet? Public relations firms are notorious for being loud, unsubtle, and delivering messages that are tainted by money and contracts. No one buys what a public relations firm says these days. We know that they are just payees from their backers and whatever they say is supposed to be a measured, sales pitch that we should eat up. But since we know what they are and what they are up to, why would we bother listening. When you send a PR firm to smear a company, of course the real journalists (who didn’t work for the newspapers or publications) asked the question, ‘Who do you work for’. From there, you were screwed, Facebook.
Lastly is the ignorance of tech methodologies. There are already a lot of articles discussing Google’s poor privacy policy. You didn’t need to invent new ones. Just focus publication and promotion on the ones that exist. Use SEO and reputation management to help drive the push and attention to those articles. You do no need to be loud and elephant like when you enter the room or try and do something like this. SEO would have been quieter and would have allowed you to push those articles that were really, truly, written by a neutral journalist, up rankings. A little dirty at best, but a lot better than your haphazard previous effort.
There, I’ve said it. Facebook is dumb too.
