Now another prominent Googler has train-hopped to the popular social-networking company as well. As first reported by BoomTown, Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google, is leaving the search sovereign to become Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy.

“[Elliot Schrage] will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an email to employees announcing the hire. “The goal here is to help people understand how the Internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things. … This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.”

“Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness, and honest internal communications”?

Clearly, Zuckerberg meant “build from the ground up a culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.” Because it’s only been about six months since the Beacon fiasco, which demonstrated how grievously the company was lacking in those qualities (see “DiaperFetishFactory.com Is Sending a Story to Your Profile,” “Epicurious Has Added a Potential Privacy Violation to Your Facebook Profile,” “Fiascobook,” and “Fiascobook, Redux“).

Perhaps if Facebook recruits enough former Googlers, it too will be able to lay claim to a silly informal motto like “Don’t Be Evil.”

What is surprising is that the result of those cracks, the AACS key, would inspire a digital revolt on a popular social news site after being widely available online for so long. Yet, that’s what happened Tuesday when administrators of Digg.com began deleting story submissions that pointed to the AACS key (the publishing of which could be a crime under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). In a matter of hours, Digg’s users rebelled, flooding the site with posts referencing the key. Turned out Digg Inc. doesn’t entirely control Digg.com. Crowdsourcing does have its disadvantages. Just look at the Digg mob running the asylum.

Finally, Digg’s leadership conceded. In a post published on the site’s blog, Digg founder Kevin Rose said the site would no longer censor stories containing the AACS key. “We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code,” he wrote. “But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

(BusinessWeek cover courtesy ILoveKetchup)