• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, July 18, 2011

How far will Facebook go to hinder Google's social media efforts? In line with its Terms of Service, Facebook has reportedly pulled a tiny ad only implicitly promoting Google+. As the story goes, Web developer Michael Lee Johnson was trolling for Google+ friends by running a Facebook ad asking people to add him to their Circles on Google+. "Facebook, apparently, did not like him using its site to build his own social network somewhere else," TechCrunch reports. "So it pulled his ads."

Exposing its contempt for Google's new social network, however, Facebook didn't stop there. According to Johnson, it banned all his other campaigns, too, CNet reports. What did Johnson do to deserve Facebook's wrath? Perhaps it was Clause 6a in the ‘Advertising Guidelines' portion of its Terms of Services, CNet suggests, which reads: "We may refuse ads at any time for any reason, including our determination that they promote competing products or services or negatively affect our business or relationship with our users."

"Yeah, Facebook frowns on people promoting competing products with Facebook ads," TechCrunch adds. "It's even in its Terms of Service." Legal or not, "it's a reminder that Facebook has yet to take any serious action to deal with Google+, and now it's punishing its users for that fact," Business Insider writes.   

As Digital Trends notes, however, this actually isn't Facebook's first "push-back" against Google+. "The company has already banned two services that allowed Plus users to import their Facebook contacts into Google's network," it writes. "And, with Google+ quickly gaining popularity, this is likely far from the last we'll see in the Facebook vs. Google+ fiasco."