Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)’s War On Google Inc (GOOG)

For those who’ve used the service for years, and who like to upload pictures frequently, Facebook albums can offer a visual walk-through of a person’s life over time.

Although Facebook’s privacy settings allow people to hide this information from other users, the company itself is obviously privy to this information, which hasn’t stopped Facebook from amassing a user base of roughly 1 billion.

In fact, leaked IMs from a young Mark Zuckerberg painted a picture of a man not particularly interested in online privacy rights:

Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard…just ask…I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS…
People just submitted it…I don’t know why…They “trust me”

Privacy concerns alone won’t stop Google

Microsoft is hoping that by pointing out Google’s privacy issues, it can boost the popularity of its own competing services. Ultimately, however, Facebook is a perfect testament to the level of privacy people are willing to forfeit online — people simply don’t care, as long as they are getting good value from the service in return.

Perhaps Microsoft’s capital would be better spent focusing its efforts on bettering its own online services, rather than attacking Google’s.

The article Microsoft’s War Against Google originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Salvatore “Sam” Mattera.

Salvatore “Sam” is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network — entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.

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