facebook admits running campaign against google

Social networking giant Facebook has owned up to hiring a public relations consultancy to expose supposed flaws in Google's privacy practices, focusing on how consumers' private data is used on the search giant's social networking service, Social Circles.

According to various online reports that mushroomed late Thursday after USA Today first broke the news, Burson-Marsteller confirmed it was hired to run a smear campaign in which major news outlets would be sent pitches highlighting potential privacy and legal issues involving Social Circle. The social networking feature enables users to view information publicly available of other users who are connected to their Google Chat and Contacts, and includes data such as Facebook accounts, Twitter feeds and personal Web sites.

The bitter rivalry between the two Internet giants was never a secret, where both companies fought over how much user data each was willing to share with the other, for instance, by allowing Facebook users to automatically import their Gmail contacts.

In a move that further intensified the rivalry, Google last month launched a new social networking feature, "+1", which industry watchers noted was bore similarities with Facebook's "Like" button. The +1 function provides users a way to recommend search results to friends.

Before Microsoft's Skype buyout earlier this week, both companies were also reportedly contemplating a deal with the videoconferencing provider.

In defense of user privacy
In a pitch to a blogger sent last week with the subject "Google quietly launches sweeping violation of user privacy", Burson-Marsteller said: "Google is collecting, storing and mining millions of people's personal information from a number of different online services and sharing it without the knowledge, consent or control of the people involved... The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day, without their permission."

Late Thursday, Dan Lyons from The Daily Beast reported that a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the company had initiated the PR campaign because it believed Google's social networking efforts raised privacy concerns and that it was using Facebook data to support these initiatives.

According to ZDNet Asia's sister site CNET News, a Burson-Marsteller spokesperson said: "Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm we undertook an assignment for that client. The client requested its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light and such information could then be independently and easily replicated by any media."

In a statement to CNET, the social networking site defended its move, noting that Google's Social Circles posed a problem for its users, but admitted it could have managed the situation differently. "No 'smear' campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook, and other service for inclusion in Google Social Circles--just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose.

"The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way," the spokesperson said.

Facebook itself had faced the wrath of privacy advocates last year when it introduced several changes to its privacy policies and to the way it handled user data. In February 2011, it said it was seeking user comments on new efforts to redesign and reorganize its privacy policy.

Google Chromebook: Will the revolution be subscribed

Google will charge businesses $1,008 to use one of its browser-centric Chromebooks for three years, and it's confident this will slice the total cost of today's business systems in half.

That's according to Rajen Sheth, the Google product manager in charge of the company's Chrome OS for Business program, unveiled with much fanfare at on Wednesday at the annual Google I/O conference in downtown San Francisco. Under the program, Google is offering Chrome OS notebooks for a monthly subscription fee beginning at $28 per user. The subscription requires a three year contract, and it includes not only continuous software updates but also a web-based management console, Google support, and hardware replacements.

According to a recent Gartner Research survey cited by Sheth, the typical business spends between $3,300 and $5,800 on each of its desktop, and he believes the subscription Chromebook will ultimately save a hefty portion of these dollars because the machine is both easier to administer and more secure that traditional machines. Chrome OS simplifies the operating system by putting most all applications and data inside the browser, and in doing so, it takes a multilayered approach to security, restricting each application to its own sandbox and introducing a verified boot sequence that seeks to identify malware at startup time.

"We think this could be a transformational model, in terms of the simplicity it offers to users and administrators, but also the security and the speed it offers," Sheth said on Wednesday during at press briefing at the conference. "We think the total cost of ownership can be less than half we what people see right now."

On many levels, the pitch makes sense. All OS updates, including security fixes, are automatically pushed down to the device over the web, and since virtually no applications or data files sit on device itself, it's easier to set up a machine ? or move to a new one when it's lost or stolen or bricked. What's more, Chromebooks ? equipped with flash drives ? offer an unusually fast boottimes.

The trouble is that Google's browser-only model limits what you can do with the machines ? more so than Google would lead you to believe. At The Register, we've long used an early version of the Chromebook ? the Cr-48 beta machine Google sent out in December ? and though there's much to recommend the platform, we can confidently say it's still years away from the replacing most business machines. Google offers ways of working around the platform's limitations ? it just unveiled a new local file manager, and Citrix is providing a desktop virtualization tool for running legacy applications ? but these tools can take you only so far.
If you lose your network connection, the machine is all but unusable. Though there are some web apps that provide adequate off-line access, even Google's own Apps suite is not among them. Google has said, however, that Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs will all provide offline access via HTML5 sometime "this summer".

In an effort to maximize net access, Google is offering machines that include not only Wi-FI but 3G hardware, but these models are more expensive. Then there's the cost of a data plan. And the, well, spotty performance of today's cellular networks. In the US at least, Google will provide 100MB of free 3G data each month through its partner Verizon wireless.

Naturally, the machines aren't suited to things like video editing, and they're quite limited when it comes to most multimedia or design tasks. But the problem goes beyond an inability to run certain applications. Even if you can accomplish the tasks at hand using nothing but web apps, you may find it difficult to move files between these apps. You can easily shuttle documents between Gmail and Google Docs. But the task is quite different if you're trying to take a screen shot, crop it, and move into a CMS system. This requires an inordinate number of steps, and these steps aren't always the smoothest.

Japan government expects banks to help ease Tepco loan burden

Japan's top government spokesman said on Friday he expects banks to be asked to help ease the burden faced by Tokyo Electric Power Co to cope with massive compensation claims from victims of the crisis at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

"The accident occurred on March 11, Accidents like this are factored into loans made prior to that. Naturally, I expect financial institutions to be asked for cooperation in light of Tokyo Electric's new financial standing," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a regular news conference.

Edano's comment comes after the government agreed earlier on the day to set up a fund with taxpayer money to help Tokyo Electric compensate victims of the crisis at its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant and avoid financial collapse.

Tepco's main creditor bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, and other lenders provided Tokyo Electric with 1.9 trillion yen (dollar 23.4 billion) in emergency loans in the immediate aftermath of the disasters.

"Loans extended to Tokyo Electric after the accident are different, and this must be known well among the Japanese people," Edano said, in response to a question about the possibility of some loans being forgiven.

"As for loans made before March 11, this is still a matter between private companies and I want to watch what I say. But, like you said, I don't think it (banks not forgiving any loans made before March 11) would win the people's understanding."

Group buying website admits cheating

Group-buying website Gaopeng.com has acknowledged cheating on an iPhone 4 drawing through the Sina micro blog and Tencent micro blog on May 10, Beijing Business Today reported on Thursday.

The website said in a statement Wednesday that it fired one vice president in charge of the drawings, according to the paper.

Gaopeng.com is the Chinese branch of the US group-buying website Groupon.com, which just entered the country in March and partly relied on lucky drawings to promote itself. The website said on May 4 that people following Gaopeng.com on micro blogs and forwarding its posts will have a chance to win a free white iPhone 4 through a lucky draw held on May 10.

More than 110,000 people participated, and the winner was found to be an employee of Gaopeng.com.

The website apologized on Wednesday and gave away 20 more iPhones as compensation to the micro-bloggers.

Gaopeng.com has arranged 19 lucky drawings since March, without publishing its method, the paper said.