Is Facebook Wrong in the Facebook vs. Google+ Battle?

We’ve all heard of the ‘Streisand Effect‘, named after American singer Barbra Streisand, where trying to keep something quiet or stopping a piece of information from getting out can only lead to even greater publicity, making the situation much worse. This wouldn’t have been too common prior to the Internet, but today, things can explode online within a matter of minutes. Is Facebook the latest victim of this phenomenon?

Google’s new-fangled social networking site ‘Google+’ has generated a huge amount of buzz over the course of the past couple weeks, and while it still remains invite-only, there exist millions of users already. Of course, this momentum isn’t something the folks behind Facebook are too pleased about, and as a result, it’s been trying to block even the mere mention of it on its site.

It all started earlier this month when Facebook decided to block an application that allowed the user to export all of their Facebook contacts in order to import them into Google+. Export tools like these are not at all uncommon, and we in fact have the ability to migrate our contacts from mail client to mail client just as we can carry our bookmarks from one Web browser to another.

A week after this occurrence, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his Google+ profile to private (the irony here is amazing), and effectively left the service behind. Whether it was Zuckerberg himself or other Facebook chairs who recommended this, we’re not sure.

Things have only gotten more blunt since then, when Facebook up and banned one of its users for creating an advertisement that invited users to add him to their Google+ accounts. Had this ad been for Facebook itself, it would have been unlikely to be a problem, but it’s become clear that Facebook wants nothing to do with Google+ as it considers it to be a serious threat.

The legality of these actions is unclear (to me). I do believe that any company has the right to protect its own business, but at the same time, there could be a point when one goes to far. While Google heightens its own Web services on its search engine, it doesn’t block out any of its competition, which is effectively what Facebook is doing.

Is Facebook wrong here? Whatever the answer, the Streisand Effect could be working in full force. Every time Facebook blocks something related to Google+, that only gives Google even more publicity.