Google Challenges Facebook Over User Address Books

jcombel writes "When you sign in to Facebook, you had the option of importing your email contacts, to 'friend' them all on the social network. Importing the other way — easily copying your Facebook contacts to Gmail — required jumping through considerable copy/paste hoops or third-party scripts. Google said enough is enough, and they're no longer helping sites that don't allow two-way contact merging. The stated intention is standing their ground to persuade other sites into allowing users to have control of where their data goes — but will this just lead to more sites putting up 'data walls?'"

Comments

Re:You can't have their email address

[hsmith]

You are totally missing the point. If your brother has your email address and uses GMail. He logs into Facebook and does the "Find people I know using Google Mail" - Facebook then has your address.

Re:You can't have their email address

[egladil]

Actually, I am the only one in the world with my name. But even if you've got a common name your brother probably doesn't have that many friends with your name so it's trivial for facebook to make the connection between your brothers gmail contact with your name and your brothers facebook friend with the same name.

Glass houses

[Raenex]

Does Google accept OpenID from all providers yet? For years now, they have provided you with an OpenID, but didn't accept an OpenID from 3rd parties. They are just now starting to allow certain providers in (big ones like Yahoo).

Re:Fake suggestions from facebook...

[wirelessbuzzers]

From what I've heard, it's a quarter-truth rather than an outright lie. If Alice finds Bob using friend finder, then this message can appear with Bob's name on it. Because there's no way to tell if a friend request came from friend finder, Bob doesn't know that he's "found friends using friend finder".