Zuckerberg reveals origin of Google privacy rift - The Guardian

Facebook doesn't hold many press conferences. But when the world's biggest social network does talk to journalists, the briefings are always best when founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg goes off script.

The 28-year-old did so on Tuesday, at the launch of Graph Search, when he openly described a "wider strategic rift" with Google and revealed for the first time why negotiations between Facebook and the search giant broke down over privacy.

According to Zuckerberg, Google was less willing (or able?) to change its search algorithm so that once a wall post or photograph was deleted from Facebook it vanished from the rival company's search results. Microsoft was able to do this and has partnered with Facebook since 2010.

"Trying to think whether it's reasonable to get into this," said Zuckerberg in a Q&A session, prompting a flurry of sudden interest from the assembled journalists. "I think the main thing is about when people share something on Facebook, we want to give them not only the ability to broadcast something out but also change their privacy settings later and take the content down.

"That requires incredibly quick updating ... We need that content to be gone immediately ... You need infrastructure that can support that and that takes a lot of commitment from the partner.

"Microsoft was more willing to do things that were specific to Facebook. Google has a system that works really well for them about how they treat information across their company, and I think that our system was different in ways that people share information and want to give them flexibility after the fact – that was the biggest stumbling block.

"That may have just been the specific thing in the negotiation, it may have been a symptom of a bigger strategic rift, but that is at least where the discussion fell apart the last time we spoke about it."

Zuckerberg was responding to a question by Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, who covered the launch of Graph Search in depth on his site.

According to Facebook insiders, Zuckerberg was not referring to fresh discussions with Google ahead of the launch of Graph Search. The dispute goes back to the "cold war" days when Google and Facebook fell out over the ownership of personal data and, latterly, Google's move into social with Google+.

It is significant because, if correct (and Google refuses to comment), it adds to the emerging theory that Google's highly complex search algorithms are increasingly at odds with the social web. Put simply: how would you feel if a photograph you removed from Facebook could still be found by people searching Google? Or an embarrassing Facebook video that appeared in Google searches for your name even though you had been de-tagged on the social network?

The worry for Google is that it will come to be seen as the reason why nothing can ever be fully removed from the internet. That is a problem for Google's brightest brains to address as Facebook and Twitter expand the social web into more areas of our lives.