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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?

9 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Suck it up Zuck. by unity100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    yeah zuckerberg. suck it up. you rode on the web culture getting to where you are. you cannot just go protectionist on us and become a control freak. share data, as others share data with you.

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    Read radical news here
    1. Re:Suck it up Zuck. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No worse than trying to watch TV with huge scrolling banners over it whining about how this station won't renew their contract, superimposed by the cable company over the station's huge scrolling banner whining about how the cable company is screwing them.

    2. Re:Suck it up Zuck. by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah. By the way, it's incredible how much you can speed the average page by adblocking facebook.com and fbcdn.net -- at least on a decent browser (Firefox, sadly not Chrome (yet?)). It's scary how big a percentage of pages bear Facebook and Twatter widgets. Heck, even Slashdot has several icons next to every single damn comment -- everyone I know, even including people who use Facebook, adblock these too which shows how annoying they are.

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      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:Suck it up Zuck. by qubezz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In fact, Google is doing a very good thing by aggravating Facebook.

      Consider the stupidity of giving Facebook your email username and password, so that Facebook can log in to your email account as you, and scrape all your contact info. (While they are at it, why don't they get your emails too...) They've conned people into doing just that.

      If you have any contact with a Gmail account user, Facebook gets your email address when the user sheepishly turn over their contact list to Facebook to automatically 'find friends'. If Facebook didn't already amass data on unwilling non-users (thanks to picture tags and such), they now have a wealth of email information about who knows who. And don't forget, their profit model is selling your privacy.

      Google should make it possible to permanently blacklist your email address from its 'export' feature through a web form, even if you have a non-gmail address, so that your gmail 'friends' can't offer up your email address out of their contact lists to third parties.

    4. Re:Suck it up Zuck. by icebike · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Really? It does me good.

      I'm sick of getting facebook invites because some fool with my address in his address book decided to upload the entire list to facebook, without so much as a "by your leave".

      My address(s) live quietly in lots of people's google contacts and I get no spam at all from that. Yet ONE person uploads that to facebook and facebook themselves start spamming me, followed in rapid succession by pill pushers and foreign diplomats, dethroned princes, and ousted former heads of state, all with lots of money they want to share with me.

      I fail to see the greed tie in here.

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      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    5. Re:Suck it up Zuck. by guyminuslife · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's a popular position to take. I was part of the "Popular Things Suck" Facebook group until too many people joined it; now it sucks.

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      I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
  2. Unnecessary by The+Yuckinator · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't need Google to tell me to not like Facebook.

  3. I Did What They Told Me To! by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    yeah zuckerberg. suck it up. you rode on the web culture getting to where you are. you cannot just go protectionist on us and become a control freak. share data, as others share data with you.

    Google told me to complain to Facebook so I did. Then all my friends asked me why I was posting images of child porn on my Facebook wall. So I went back to Google and complained about that and now a Google van slowly circles my house twenty four hours everyday. I went on Google maps to look at my house but there's just an image of a smoldering crater and a Jolly Roger. I logged back on to Facebook and Zuckerberg had killed my farmer and was raping my livestock as the fields burned.

    I'm scared. I don't think I'll get in the middle of this kinda stuff next time. You can have all my data locked up, I just want my Farmville to be okay! Why, piggy, why!? I loveded you, I loveded you piggy!

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    My work here is dung.
  4. Re:Why are we getting pulled into this turf war? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    > The data on my Facebook site is mine.

    That's where you have a misunderstanding.