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Google Asks Users To Complain Against Facebook

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the battle-of-the-billions dept.

dkd903 writes "A kind of war has been going on recently between Facebook and Google over a contact export issue. First, Google blocked Facebook access to the Gmail contacts API. To this, Facebook responded back with a new method to get Gmail contacts of a user (the download contacts option). And now Google has slapped back again at Facebook and asks users indirectly to file a data protectionism complaint against Facebook. When a Facebook user clicks on the Download Your Contacts button on the 'Facebook import contact via Gmail' page, the user is then redirected to a new page on Google's server, which looks something like this..." Can I just say that watching this is absolutely hysterical?

7 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Great. I'm doing it now by bhagwad · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just registered a complaint. This is the right thing to do. People and corporations must be made aware that they have no right to hang on to user's personal data without giving them the choice to export it in an easy and convenient way.

    1. Re:Great. I'm doing it now by ach1000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      https://www.google.com/dashboard

    2. Re:Great. I'm doing it now by AaxelB · · Score: 4, Informative

      So wait... how exactly can I view, let alone export, all the personal data that Google has collected on me over the years? What if I want to switch to a different search engine but don't want to lose all the behind the scenes tweaking that can be done with a good decades worth of search history?

      https://www.google.com/history/

      I don't know if they provide an export feature, but all the searches you made while logged in are there. I found out I've done 11307 searches! That's actually fewer than I thought... It's pretty interesting to look at what I was searching for 4 years ago.

    3. Re:Great. I'm doing it now by Adm.Wiggin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why don't you try clicking on one, then? https://www.google.com/history/lookup?st=web

  2. Re:Suck it up Zuck. by bhagwad · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you want to register a complaint, here is the page where Google allows you to do so: http://www.google.com/mail/help/contacts_export_confirm.html

  3. Re:Size of FB is frightening by Triv · · Score: 4, Informative

    I bet search volume on FB is getting close to Google.com, and this is not even core business for FB.

    You spend WAAAAAAAAAY too much time on Facebook if your perspective on their share of the internet search market is that narrow.

    Facebook, as of February, was sitting at 700 status updates a second. Know how many google searches were made every second as of February? 34,000.

    So no, not close. Not even close to close.

  4. Re:Who's Laughing Now? by Chapter80 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is the first time Google has ever actually attempted to wield power.

    Huh?

    Net Neutrality, Spectrum Auction, Defining the mobile platform, and battling Microsoft all immediately come to mind as times that Google has attempted to wield power.

    I'm sure we could come up with others if we thought about it.