It looks like the war between Facebook and Google is about to heat up as the search engine giant is now denying user data access to the social networking king.
Previously Facebook was able to access user data from various Google services (like orkut) without having to provide Google with access to their social graph, although as of right now that apparently ends today.
Google is committed to making it easy for users to get their data into and out of Google products. That is why we have a data liberation engineering team dedicated to building import and export tools for users. We are not alone. Many other sites allow users to import and export their information, including contacts, quickly and easily. But sites that do not, such as Facebook, leave users in a data dead end.
So we have decided to change our approach slightly to reflect the fact that users often aren’t aware that once they have imported their contacts into sites like Facebook they are effectively trapped. Google users will still be free to export their contacts from our products to their computers in an open, machine-readable format–and once they have done that they can then import those contacts into any service they choose. However, we will no longer allow websites to automate the import of users’ Google Contacts (via our API) unless they allow similar export to other sites. (via TechCrunch)
While it’s doubtful that Facebook will relent regarding its policy regarding contacts, Google’s attempt to force Facebook to give up data will ultimately fail unless other companies make similar policies or the government gets involved (both scenarios highly unlikely).
Unfortunately while the two tech titans battle it out, users (once again) will end up experiencing the fall out from this war, who could turn on both companies for not finding a way to work with each other.
Ironically the only victor in this war is Bing!, who needs Facebook to maintain hostilities with the search engine giant in order to remain relevant in the search wars against the Google Goliath (the latter who has consistently out maneuvered Microsoft).
(Image via Slate)
Originally posted on November 5, 2010 @ 1:57 pm