With news of an updated Facebook SERP buzzing around the superhighway, the new kid on the search block takes one more step onto the turf of Mr Google next door. Plus to annoy him even more, Facebook joining forces with long term adversary Mr Bing across the road, may seem to have made Mr Google take some extra steps to hold him back. Let’s call him Faceboy to continue the metaphor.
The change Mr Google has made to his Google Contacts API terms of service basically now say that seeing as Faceboy can borrow any of Mr Google’s contacts, Faceboy, (and any other company for that matter) must share their contacts in return:
“5.8. Google supports data portability. By accessing Content through the Contacts Data API or Portable Contacts API for use in your service or application, you are agreeing to enable your users to export their contacts data to other services or applications of their choice in a way that’s substantially as fast and easy as exporting such data from Google Contacts, subject to applicable laws.”
If Faceboy does not comply with these new terms, then people will no longer be able to upload their Google contacts to Facebook. They can, of course, still do it manually.
What you may not know is that Faceboy does have a deal in place with the likes of Hotmail and Yahoo, which lets them grab all your contact details from Facebook. Here’s what a Google spokesman said to TechCruch:
“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’ GoogleContacts (via our API) unless they allow similar export to other sites.
It’s important that when we automate the transfer of contacts to another service, users have some certainty that the new service meets a baseline standard of data portability. We hope that reciprocity will be an important step towards creating a world of true data liberation–and that this move will encourage other websites to allow users to automate the export of their contacts as well.”
Is Mr Google throwing its weight around in an attempt to get Faceboy to play fair?
Or is Faceboy just ignoring the need for a ‘baseline standard of data portability’?
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