Facebook Isn’t Sharing Their Toys; Google Bars User Data From Facebook

Starting very soon, you won’t be able to import all of your Gmail contacts in one shot into your Facebook account. Looks like Google is a little miffed at Facebook for not making tools available to let the information flow both ways; Google wants the ability to import Facebook friends and use other Facebook data as it wants to, like Facebook can now use Google’s data.

Facebook will not be the only company to get the axe from the mighty Google; any company that does not let information flow both ways will be denied access to account information.

“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 said in an emailed statement.

“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,” Google said.

The new rules are supposed to be about making a Google user’s information less available to other services while still making it available to the user. Google states that users will still be able to download their address books, etc. into any machine-readable format. However, I know some people who wouldn’t be able to do that if you promised them endless bacon as a reward. The non-tech-savvy have, effectively, been barred from importing their Gmail contacts into Facebook.

Analysts weighed in on the news with suppositions that Google is afraid of the competition from Facebook, others see it as Google trying to gain access to Facebook’s information to leverage their search results. If it is the latter, then Google, block away. While I and the rest of the readers of this blog likely have our privacy settings on Def-Con 4 mode, the rest of the world doesn’t, and they are likely to be a little surprised when the fact that they “like” Britney Spears shows up for the entire world to see.

What do you think of Google’s move? Unwieldy power-wielding or smart business sense?

As Reported By: Reuters