Facebook vs. Google fights

"Google quietly launches sweeping violation of user privacy!" screamed the all-caps headline of an e-mail that popped into journalists' and bloggers' inboxes last week.

The e-mails were meant to whip media outlets into a frenzy -- but the effort backfired when journalists found out that that the anti-Google campaign, conducted by PR giant Burson-Marsteller, was paid for by Facebook.

Welcome to a new level skullduggery in the growing war between Facebook and Google.

At stake is one of the most valuable data sets in existence: The social graph. It's a map of the connections between you and everyone you interact with. Facebook has it. Google has pieces of it, and wants more. That puts the two companies on a collision course. Read more...