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Google Vs Facebook

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1st slap from Google. The war between Google and Facebook is heating up: Google just made one small tweak to its Terms of Service that will have a big impact on the world’s biggest social network. From now on, any service that accesses Google’s Contacts API — which makes it easy to import your list of friends’ and coworkers’ email addresses into another service — will need to offer reciprocity. Facebook doesn’t, so it’s going to lose access to this key piece of the social graph. So what does that mean in layman’s terms? When you initially sign up for Facebook, you’re run through a series of prompts asking you to enter your Google account information so that Facebook can import the email addresses of your contacts.

This is a very powerful feature because it helps new users instantly connect with dozens of their friends. You see, Facebook has never allowed users to export the contact information of their friends. Yes and no. Here’s the relevant addition of the Terms of Service for the Contacts API: 5.8. Data Protectionism Begins In Earnest. Our post earlier tonight about Google shutting down Facebook’s access to Gmail data exports makes me think two things. First, I’m not sure there’s much data that Facebook doesn’t already have with its 600 million users (although 1.3 billion people visit Google sites a week, so they’re not exactly slumming). And second, the data protectionist era has now begun in earnest. Trade restrictions, tariffs, etc., called protectionism, is always a double edged sword.

It has the short term benefit of helping domestic companies stay competitive and profitable, and that also protects jobs. On the downside the consumer is hit with higher prices on whatever industry is being protected. And protected industries tend to lag behind competitively, so when/if the restrictions are lifted they are in a very bad situation. But here’s the very worst part of protectionism. I’m seeing all the signs of a “data war” beginning now. Well, everyone but Facebook. This is a game theory situation. War Of Words On “Openness” FB Strikes Back. That huge sucking sound you hear is Facebook, piling data from third parties into its mouth as fast as it can while it remains stubbornly greedy about releasing its own data to anyone it doesn’t like. Which is mostly Google these days, since Yahoo and AOL completely surrendered and Microsoft actually owns part of them.

Google shut them down last week, restricting API access and effectively blocking contacts exports to Facebook in any automated way. This is, I wrote, the true beginning of data protectionism. Now Facebook has found a way around that restriction. They’re leveraging a Google feature that lets users download their own data for their own use – part of Google’s golf-clap worthy data liberation effort. They’ve hacked a solution around the block by giving users a direct deep link to the download feature. And then users can upload that file directly to Facebook. Can Google block this? It’s also a big middle finger to Google. Update: Google’s response here. Google's 2nd slap. Yesterday Facebook released a clever way to continue to download Google user data, despite Google banning Facebook from using their APIs.

It looks to me like they aren’t going to try to stop Facebook from using this more manual approach. Instead, for now, it’s being escalated only via words: We’re disappointed that Facebook didn’t invest their time in making it possible for their users to get their contacts out of Facebook. As passionate believers that people should be able to control the data they create, we will continue to allow our users to export their Google contacts. That’s a nice swipe there in the beginning, about how they wish Facebook had spent time giving people a way to liberate their own Facebook data rather than building tools to end run around Google. We’re talking about your Facebook friends list and their email addresses. Comment of a FB Engineer. Yesterday Facebook released a clever way to continue to download Google user data, despite Google banning Facebook from using their APIs. It looks to me like they aren’t going to try to stop Facebook from using this more manual approach.

Instead, for now, it’s being escalated only via words: We’re disappointed that Facebook didn’t invest their time in making it possible for their users to get their contacts out of Facebook. As passionate believers that people should be able to control the data they create, we will continue to allow our users to export their Google contacts. That’s a nice swipe there in the beginning, about how they wish Facebook had spent time giving people a way to liberate their own Facebook data rather than building tools to end run around Google. That last bit though, about “people should be able to control the data they create” doesn’t quite hit the mark though in my opinion. We’re talking about your Facebook friends list and their email addresses. It's a trap ! If you hadn't yet heard, there's been a bit of a kerfuffle this past week over your data by two Internet giants - Facebook and Google.

It started when Google began blocking other services from importing its data without reciprocity, a move aimed directly at Facebook. Since then, the ball has been hit back and forth, with Facebook making an end-run around Google and deep-linking directly to a contact exporter on Google. Now, Google has retaliated by asking any user that gets that far if you are "super sure you want to import your contact information for your friends into a service that won't let you get it out? " Take a look at Google's rather hilarious response after the jump. (Click on image for full size view) This is the page that Facebook users now see when they try to export their Google data to find their friends on Facebook. This is just the latest move in a week-long skirmish between the two companies. Here is the full text of Google's warning: Hold on a second. Zuck: "not sure 100% right" A day after announcing the new Facebook Messages, Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today.

Here is a look at some of the key points brought up during tonight’s discussion. On Facebook Messages If you missed yesterday’s announcement, but caught today’s, you’ll be happy to know that Zuckerberg recycled his speech and anecdotes from yesterday when questioned about what Facebook Messages was and what he hopes it will do. If you missed both, Zuckerberg talked to the audience about how his girlfriend’s sister, who is in high school, complained that she and her friends didn’t really use email even though they had accounts. When pressed for why, she exclaimed that it was too slow. Too slow? Well, what she meant was that it was too formal and that is where Zuckerberg hopes Facebook Messages fits in.

According to Mark, of course. On Privacy I’m not sure we’re 100% right on this but we’re trying to think through all of these things. On Advertising/Competition. Facebook Removing Gmail From List Of 3rd Party Email Providers. Something is up on the Facebook vs. Google data reciprocity front. It looks like Facebook is removing Gmail from the list of third party email providers on “Find Friends”, whereas we were seeing direct link downloads to Gmail contacts still offered as an option just a couple of days ago. It gets stranger. Some new users who sign up with their Gmail accounts can still see the option to add friends from Gmail, but when I tried to import contacts I got the below “Everyone on this contact list is already on Facebook or has already been invited” message.

In other words it didn’t work. Signing up with a non-Gmail account eliminates the option entirely even though you still have the capability to manually download and upload your contact files. Here’s our ongoing tally: I’ve contacted both Facebook and Google for more information and will update this post when they respond. Update: Word from Google is that nothing has changed from its side. Before … After. This is an intervention. Hi Google, hey Facebook, sit yourselves down. I need to have a word with you both. You see, it’s not escaped our notice that you’ve both had a bit of a fall-out over the past few weeks, and quite frankly it’s getting silly. Google, you started the spat by blocking Facebook users from searching their Gmail accounts to find friends.

Your reason for this? Because Facebook doesn’t allow users to do the same thing, find users on other services by searching their Facebook account. Facebook, you quickly found a way around this using Google’s own Contacts export tool, much to the anger of Google who quickly added a feistily-worded warning that users would be “trapping” their contacts if they went ahead. Now Facebook, TechCrunch reports that you’ve decided drop all mention of Gmail from your contacts search tool entirely. Okay, both of you – listen.

Facebook, it seems to me that you’ve been trying your hardest to think of users here by offering a work around to Google’s restrictions.

Analysis

Bonus: How to Export mails from FB. A few days ago I requested that Facebook finally allow us to download email addresses for all of our friends. Facebook says this isn’t allowed because you only own the data you add to Facebook, not data that your friends add. Their statement was, in part (entire statement here): The most important principle for Facebook is that every person owns and controls her information. Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information.

A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums. We pointed out that Facebook already allows mass exporting of friends’ private email addresses via deals with Microsoft, Yahoo and possibly other partners. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums, unless it’s with a partner that’s making it worth our while. 1.