Facebook Blocks Google+ App, Google Removes Twitter From Real Time Search

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has blocked access to Friend Exporter, a Google Chrome application that helps users import their Facebook contacts into Google's new social network — Google Plus. " Meanwhile, reader dkd903 points out that Google has been busy removing Twitter from real time search, due to a contract expiry with Twitter."

Comments

Alas.

[Vegemeister]

Begun, the Corp War has.

Re:Alas.

[arth1]

And as in any war, the overwhelming majority of casualties will be civilians.

pure...

[boldie]

idiots

This was expected

[slackzilly]

Move on

And the consumer is in the middle.

[LWATCDR]

Facebook is really annoying because my friends are well my friends. My pictures and so on.
Twitter is and Google I hope will fix this. Twitter is just an odd thing. How do they make money without destroying Twitter? Also I am shocked how few people use Twitter and yet at the same time how important it has become.

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[Missing.Matter]

Didn't you read the TOS? Your friends are now Facebook's friends. Your pictures and memories.... all belong to Facebook. I believe there was something about your soul in there as well...

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[Bieeanda]

Nah. They made a play for people's souls, but millions Liked the 'plz dont take my soul FB' group page and they backed off. Everyone expects them to try it again sometime soon, though.

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[Lazy Jones]

Twitter is and Google I hope will fix this.

Last time I checked, Google was a big corporation determined to increase its revenue by all possible means, just like Facebook. If they have turned into a charity recently, I must have missed it.

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[TheRaven64]

Your pictures and memories.... all belong to Facebook

No they don't. Facebook just has a sublicenseable, transferable, license to them that they can sell to any interested parties. You still nominally own them. For extra fun, if you upload any pictures to Facebook that you don't own the copyright for, you just indemnified Facebook if they are sued for selling them when they don't actually have a valid license to do so.

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[SudoGhost]

I'm just glad all those "Like this and copy this to keep Facebook free!" posts have worked.

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[formfeed]

Last time I checked, Google was a big corporation determined to increase its revenue by all possible means, just like Facebook.

I see a big difference between a company that sets some ethical standards but doesn't always live up to it and a company that doesn't have any.

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[Lazy Jones]

I see a big difference between a company that sets some ethical standards but doesn't always live up to it and a company that doesn't have any.

Yeah, the difference is your perception, claiming to have some sort of standards or not doing so has nothing to do with actual conduct. If anything, corporations tend to publish ethical standards as a form of damage control after getting caught. Go look at any other large evil corporation, it'll have a neat claim of that sort: Microsoft, Monsanto ...

Re:And the consumer is in the middle.

[Lazy Jones]

Google have shown themselves to be better than that.

Oh, that ... Amazing strategic decision to sell breaking laws in China in order to have a competitive advantage over Baidu as "doing good".

How Microsoft of Them

[causality]

"Facebook has blocked access to Friend Exporter, a Google Chrome application that helps users import their Facebook contacts into Google's new social network — Google Plus. "

Clearly Facebook is afraid to compete on the merits of its services. Isn't that the message whenever any sort of vendorlock is implemented?

I never before took Google's social network very seriously. Now that Facebook is showing fear of them, and acting so childish about it, I'm willing to reconsider that. To anyone with some sense, Facebook is providing a more stunning endorsement of Google's services than Google itself could have ever created.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[inasity_rules]

I second that. Also the clever marketing ploy where google plus tells me they've got no further capacity right now... Check back later....

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Bloodwine77]

If Google+ is to succeed, they need to stop with the invite-only nonsense. A social network is only as strong as its user-base, and Google+ remains questionable until it has enough people on it to make it worthwhile.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[inasity_rules]

To be fair, they're "still testing." A bit like how gmail was in the early days...

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[segedunum]

Facebook was effectively invite only for a while until anyone over 13 could join up and that only seemed to increase the excitement. You want to be a part of what you can't have.

If I was Facebook I would be worried. Zuckerberg merely came up with a few chance ideas that made social networks......social. Relationship status and all that. Apart from that it's merely a fairly clean looking, unspectacular PHP application. Facebook's lead as the premier social networking site is everything. If they have to start competing on technology then the future doesn't look bright.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[ByOhTek]

Agreed. I wonder if Google should pay facebook commission for this? Maybe a LOL email every 1k users?

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[beuges]

Except that you can test an email platform with a limited amount of users, because those users can still email others outside of your platform, due to the way email works.

I've had a google+ profile for almost a week, and I haven't bothered logging in after the first day, because none of my friends are on it and I can't invite them either. It's a social network that doesn't allow you to network with your social circle.

When I mentioned that I had a google+ account, at least a dozen of my friends asked me to invite them, and I couldn't. They'll probably lose interest waiting for an invite, just as I've lost interest waiting to have more friends to interact with.

How exactly am I supposed to help them test their platform if I can't use it?

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[WelshRarebit]

Yup, if they had opened it up immediately and there were any bugs, these same folks would be here bitching and moaning that they should have tested it first.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[mcvos]

On the other hand, I love Google+, because a lot of friends are on it that never were on Facebook. And most of my favourite and more active Facebook contacts have also migrated already. So for me, it's a big win already.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[RoFLKOPTr]

Yes, but all your friends who go to the same school have an edu address just like you.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[slyrat]

I second that. Also the clever marketing ploy where google plus tells me they've got no further capacity right now... Check back later....

The reason they are doing this is because of previous problems with letting everyone in at the beginning. They messed things up with Buzz when they did that. I think it is a good idea so that a lot of the kinks and small annoyances get worked out.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Zenaku]

Facebook started out by being only available to students attending a few select schools, but I don't think that is "effectively invite only." The difference is that when one is a full-time student at a university, the vast majority of your friends and acquaintances are also students at that university. It wasn't open to the public, but for those it was open to, it was also open to a great many of the people they would want to interact with.

With Google+ the sample of people you could network with is essentially random. I would like to try it, but I haven't scored an invite, and even if I did -- I only know one other person who has been able to try it.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Riceballsan]

On the other hand maybe they want to make sure there aren't any kinks or drastic oversights that will cause mass poor publicity, like what happened with buzz.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Anonymous Coward]

You can invite them! Make a circle of all your friends by their email address, and make a status update with that circle as the target. It will mention under that it will be emailing all your friends, make sure that is turned on.

Once you post that, they'll all get an email telling them about google+. google are leaving the signup door open for hours on and hours off each day, it seems, so tell them to keep trying - I do it in the status update. They click the links they get in their email and they, if Google have signups turned on, can then sign up to Google+.

You don't even have to make a circle, just paste their email addresses in to the target box and do a random status update aimed at them, they'll get the email eventually. I think it has to be a gmail account though possibly? Although you should test that.

I've invited over 60 of my friends now and I haven't had even one invite :P

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Xest]

It all wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Facebook built up it's userbase around taking information from things like MSN, your e-mail contacts and so forth.

Worse, I've had a Facebook recommendation from Facebook for someone I've only ever spoken to via MSN and have no real life friend connections, and both of us are tech savvy such that neither of us let Facebook import friends from Outlook, MSN etc. and we both live at opposite ends of the country and have never met IRL so I'm still to this day a little perplexed as to how the hell Facebook made that link. It kind of implies that Facebook has had access to MSN data even when explicit permission wasn't given.

In this respect it's sheer hypocrisy, I mean what the hell is wrong with them? It's fine for them to build their business off the back of others, but not for someone else to do the same with them?

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[_Sprocket_]

The reason they are doing this is because of previous problems with letting everyone in at the beginning. They messed things up with Buzz when they did that. I think it is a good idea so that a lot of the kinks and small annoyances get worked out.

The problem with Buzz was that everyone was immediately integrated in to Buzz which exposed some aspects of one's other Google service accounts that wasn't otherwise previously available to others.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[daedae]

That's what happened for me with Wave. Eventually I got my wife on it and we used it to plan some travel, but none of my other friends really used it. (Of course, the bigger problem with Wave was nobody really knew what to use it for, even once it opened and they had people to use it with.)

Plus has worked out much better for my social network, though: one of my friends got an invite and the majority of our network got added in the ~12 hour period that invites were open. One of our friends remarked that we're clearly not the norm and that while most of her computer science grad student friends had gotten full networks, all of her non-computer science friends on Plus basically only had her in their circles.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[AvitarX]

That's how facebook took off too.

It started with less annoying people than myspace (being university only), then opened to the public, but the fact that social network whores were already invested in myspace slowed the pace of facebook becoming annoying.

What do I know though, I thought buzz was alright, and it's automatic stuff was painfully clear and explained to me.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[shadowfaxcrx]

Yeah, that strategy was a huge flop for Gmail. . . ;)

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention, you /can/ invite people, it's just not straightforward and still limited. I invited about 20 people yesterday, by sharing a post with them. They could "Only view it by email" but within the same day, or worst, by the next day or so, they could all log in and create accounts at some point.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[DarkOx]

I don't know about that. Facebook owes I think much of its early success to its at the time exclusivity. First it was just Harvard, then it was Harvard and some other top teir schools. People joined because it was people they already knew personally and trusted or people that had already been vetted by the administrations board of an institution they have some degree of trust in, who they would be encountering as other users of the service.

Then Facebook expanded to pretty much any College, which still restricted its users to a particular social economic group for the most part. They exploited the comfort level of that trust. Then after the users were path dependent of FB they violated that trust and through the doors open to all. I never would have created an account if FB had been like it is today when I signed up.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Tarlus]

Kind of like how the invitation-only beta caused Gmail to be such a failure?

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[bberens]

Manufactured scarcity is one of the many marketing tactics used to increase demand. It's used in everything from cellphones and Nintendos to even Facebook, which started out as an "exclusive" service to members of certain colleges.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Nemyst]

I've invited my friends just fine. You just need to share something with them, at which point they'll get an email with info and a link to join Google+.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[bberens]

Hopefully the "circle" concept will make it easier to make it so you don't have to hear social network spam from your friends with no lives. I don't have a g+ account, and I'm not particularly interested in signing up but it does seem like it could make some headway wrt what you're talking about.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Tarlus]

Not only that, but I think the exclusivity causes people to covet it until they start to wet themselves with anticipation. Once they finally get access they'll feel like they've just crossed something off their bucket list.

When I saw the announcement at Engadget and saw how many people were foaming at the mouth while freely tossing out their email addresses into the open for a scrap, I lost a little bit of my faith in humanity.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[PriyanPhoenix]

Yeah, that strategy was a huge flop for Google Wave. . . ;)

FTFY. Wave is far more comparable where the platform is closed off from non-users, unlike Gmail that interacted just fine with every other email service. Google does need to learn that just because the strategy was so successful for Gmail, that doesn't mean it's the right fit for any new project they launch.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Hatta]

Except that you can test an email platform with a limited amount of users, because those users can still email others outside of your platform, due to the way email works.

Which is exactly the way social networking should work. If they took a hint from SMTP, NNTP, and IRC they could come up with a nice, distributed social network protocol that could last for 30 years.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Verteiron]

I've found that you can invite anyone in simply by manually adding their email address to a Google+ post you make. Everyone that I have "Added" in such a way has received an email that allowed them to create an account.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[thynk]

If Google+ is to succeed, they need to stop with the invite-only nonsense. A social network is only as strong as its user-base, and Google+ remains questionable until it has enough people on it to make it worthwhile.

I disagree. By limiting the access to the service, it makes it a scarce resource and people who wouldn't be interested in it are now dying to get in because they have been told they can't. Besides, if even I can get an invite in, anyone who knows anyone can probably find a way in.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[TheRaven64]

There's a big difference between email and social networking (at least as currently implemented). Email is naturally federated. I run my own mail server, and only three people have accounts on it, but we can still exchange emails with anyone else that we want to. If I run a social networking server with three users... that's just a bit sad. Unless, of course, it's running some open protocol that has established servers (Diaspora, OpenSocial, OneSocialWeb, and so on). Unfortunately, none of these protocols has yet reached any kind of critical mass.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[shadowfaxcrx]

Meh. You're right, of course, but I don't think the strategy will hurt Google with +. MMO's do ultra-limited releases to special beta testers too, and they do just fine. I think they'll build enough buzz and then do a wide release, and I think that once they release it they'll have their biggest marketing advantage still intact- - people are pissed at FB for all the privacy BS they pull, and would love to ditch it.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[redemtionboy]

Because Facebook launched nationwide to everyone at once and didn't do something like slowly expand from school to school and then eventually to the general public....oh wait.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[spire3661]

The Wii's scarcity had NOTHING to do with manufactured scarcity. They simply COULD NOT make them fast enough.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Anonymous Coward]

This one stumped me briefly, as I have NEVER used a contact importer, and it friend-suggested someone to me that I had limited contact with from a forum I frequented in late high school.

Eventually I realized that the other party must have used the contact importer, and it was testing me against that other party's contact list.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[icebraining]

It's not hypocritical. Facebook principle is 'doing what we can to make money'. Both actions are perfectly consistent with that. They never claimed that copying contacts is "wrong."

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[sexconker]

If Google+ is to succeed, they need to stop with the invite-only nonsense. A social network is only as strong as its user-base, and Google+ remains questionable until it has enough people on it to make it worthwhile.

You've got it all backwards.
If Google+ was wide open, no one would give a shit. "Meh. All my friends are on Facebook."
By artificially making Google+ "exclusive", people want to get in on that shit to feel special. And once they get in on that shit, they'll spam invites to all of their friends on facebook so other people can recognize how special they are.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[EraserMouseMan]

Really, Facebook today is in the same boat Apple was in back before Steve Jobs took over. If Zuckerberg put Jobs on his board of directors things would turn around in no time flat. Incorporating some clean Apple branding and incorporating an iFacebook-type theme would garner huge amounts of affection from the disgruntled user-base. They wouldn't even have to change any functionality at all. The flaws and limitations would instantly be re-cast as "design choices" and "limits in place to protect the user experience". And who doesn't love that?

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[tapo]

Not the same thing - you have groups of friends at each individual school, and you have friends in other colleges who had likely already been invited to Facebook, and everyone could network together. Who couldn't you network with? People not in college, high school students, people who had graduated. It was a very concentrated experience.

The problem with Google+ is that it's just so scattershot. I invited people I know, then they blocked invites. What's the common thing they all have together? They know me, and nothing else. There's no reason for them to come back to the site.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[redemtionboy]

I would suspect that Google is planning a much more rapid rollout than facebook though, making the limited market expansion method a little less plausible. I mean, it JUST launched. Start complaining about it's lack of open enrollment in 4 months, not within the first week.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[darkshadow88]

How many are going to encounter an issue, figure out how to replicate it, then go file a bug report? None?

I've done so several times with the Music beta, so it's at least one.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[jp10558]

Interestingly enough, when Facebook started to get big, I was a year or two out of college, so couldn't join. I might well have joined then, but once it went public all the privacy problems were out, and so I to this day don't have a facebook page.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[neoform]

Google is just as tight about their search results as FB is with their userbase...

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[dcollins]

"If Google+ is to succeed, they need to stop with the invite-only nonsense."

Is this exactly how Google rolled out GMail?
Isn't this exactly how Facebook built itself, initially limiting itself to certain college campuses?
Isn't this how any marketer wants to introduce a service, by making it appear that there's overwhelming demand?

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[cyanid3]

I've had 2 of my friends try and send me an invite but it doesn't seem to work. My inbox does not show any email about the invite. What gives?

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[matzahboy]

It's not like Google came around with a potential competitor and Facebook banned exporting friends out of fear. Facebook has always banned any application that allowed you to export friends. Maybe they do it out of fear, but they wrote it into their TOS. Banning the Google application is the rule, not the exception.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[steelfood]

Yes, but Facebook was orginally built as a way for people to reconnect after college. School to school makes sense for that purpose, because the people most likely on your network was going to be in the same school as you. So either your school was there, or it wasn't, and it didn't impact existing users much in terms of who they could contact.

Also don't forget that Facebook was an unknown when it began. Google's a huge name. Everybody would want to be on it, and if they don't succeed, then they'll have a negative impression of it and give up.

Google needs to roll out by giving out a certain number of non-accumulating invites to each of its users on a set interval. That way, people can say to their friends, "Sure, I'm on it, but I won't have anymore invites until 'x time period' so I'll invite you then." That's how to roll out a new social networking service.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[steelfood]

And you were expecting any better of Facebook? Really?

Time and time again, they've shown themselves to be douches. Just because they're "hot" right now doesn't mean they're not pricks.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[ajo_arctus]

It's a risky strategy -- on the one hand they annoy people and prevent the service from growing at a super-fast rate. On the other hand, they know that people who really want in will find a way, and those that do will feel in a sense that they belong to a 'special club', and that may cement their loyalty to the service. They probably want to build a really deep fan base before they unleash it on the fickle farm-ville playing masses.

I was an early adopter of gmail, back in the limited beta days, and I'm still a huge fan now.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[TangoMargarine]

If you're inviting people, why would you need an invite? You're already using the thing.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[houghi]

Creating sparsity is a well known way to push a product. Hold it back now and people will try to do anything to get on it. Then open the gates a bit more and suddenly allow everybody in.
People will be drumming at the door to get access.

Bit like people waiting weeks in line for a movie that you could see a week later or a product you could buy a month later.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[yuhong]

Yea, there were a lot of old stories on TechCrunch on exactly this.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[AmberBlackCat]

"Facebook has blocked access to Friend Exporter, a Google Chrome application that helps users import their Facebook contacts into Google's new social network — Google Plus. "

Clearly Facebook is afraid to compete on the merits of its services. Isn't that the message whenever any sort of vendorlock is implemented?

I'd like to be able to access a list of the top 1000 search terms submitted to Google any given day. Are they going to give that out?

It would also be nice to be able to download a list of all sites indexed by Google. Yes I know it's a huge database but still, are they going to give that out?

This is all about one company trying to take another company's most valuable asset. It's not like Google wants the information because information wants to be free. They want it so they can kill their competition. And if they become the new dominant social network, do you think they're going to make it easy to put the information in a competing network? It will be about as easy as it is to get the source code to the latest Android.

Now go ahead and flame me, Googlebots. And when you're done, go do some fake product reviews. It's what bots do.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[GNious]

"Google+ is in limited Field Trial
Right now, we're testing with a small number of people, but it won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone. Leave us your email address and we'll make sure you're the first to know when we're ready to invite more people.
Keep Me Posted
Already invited? We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon."

from: https://plus.google.com/up/start/?sw=1&type=st

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Sam Douglas]

I think Wave's key problem was direction. Wave did a bunch of technically cool things, but when it came down to it, most people who got Wave invites went on there, created a couple of meta-waves and found a bunch of shortcomings of the implementation. They didn't know why they wanted it.

I think in that sense, Gmail and Google+ both had a better start. It is annoying having to clear out your inbox, hunting for that important email is annoying. Gmail has lots of storage space and searching. We interact with lots of different groups of people in our lives. Sometimes it is good to know only certain people can hear you. Sometimes posts that are important to you get lost amongst the chaff. Google+ gives you control over who you share with and who you listen to.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[Anonymus]

It takes about 24 hours to receive your invite via email. Once you finally get the email, it usually isn't an invite but a message that says "The Google+ project is currently working out all the kinks with a small group of testers. If you're not able to access Google+, please check again soon."

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[monkyyy]

im guessing they dont have spare data centers around, or video chat bandwidth and guessing how badly wave and buzz went they are probably taking it slow so it isnt "manufactured" much at all

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[delt0r]

This is the "You can't come technique". http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s05e06-cartmanland

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[delt0r]

Facebook started out by being only available to students attending a few select schools..

Yea, but you just lied about what school you went too. Both me and my Daughter did that, since no Austrian schools where first on the list ;). However i got sick of the slowness and the constant lameness of facebook and deleted my account. Which was much harder than faking which school you came from.

Re:How Microsoft of Them

[cavebison]

It all wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Facebook built up it's userbase around taking information from things like MSN, your e-mail contacts and so forth.

Why doesn't Google+ just ask for your Facebook password, the way FB asked everyone for the Yahoo/Gmail/etc password? Seems a fair exchange.

Every app asked for every other app's password would be a rather amusing situation.

People are Facebook's product, not their customers

[Bloodwine77]

If there was any doubt as to how Facebook thinks of its users, this should drive home the fact that people are Facebook's product. It is only free if you don't value your information.

Thank you Facebook

[JanneM]

You just gave me another reason to go with Google+ and ignoring you.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[arth1]

You just gave me another reason to go with Google+ and ignoring you.

I see a reason to avoid both empires.
Yes, despite common belief, you can have an active online life without Facebook and Google.

(I switched my search provider from Google last week. After the latest "improvements", almost all search results I get are from Chinese wholesale companies and Indian ad-sponsored keyword re-bloggers, of which there appears to be millions. I.e. Google has become far less useful.)

Re:Thank you Facebook

[shydescending]

Wow, what are you searching for? I've noticed nothing of the sort.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Don't add your reason to the giant pile of reasons to leave Facebook which is so high it's blocking the sun in parts of South America. Reduce, Reuse, Refriend.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[darkmeridian]

Stop searching for Indian Viagra, then. Facebook and LinkedIn are convenient ways to keep track of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. Of course, it's possible to do it without Facebook, but it's much more complicated to do so.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[arth1]

Wow, what are you searching for? I've noticed nothing of the sort.

The straw that broke the camel's back was trying to find a replacement onyx marble. Not wholesale. In the US, not India or China.
Trying to find a non-wholesale watch casing was also ... interesting.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[arth1]

Stop searching for Indian Viagra, then.

Speaking from experience there? Don't judge my searches by yours.

There truly should be a way to restrict search results by country, not just by language. And rebloggers should be scored down, not up.

Facebook and LinkedIn are convenient ways to keep track of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. Of course, it's possible to do it without Facebook, but it's much more complicated to do so.

Keeping track of people is rude and a cousin of stalking.
Keeping in touch with people one-on-one is not "much more complicated".
If you can't do it unless I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn, I am happy that you're not.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[russotto]

The straw that broke the camel's back was trying to find a replacement onyx marble. Not wholesale. In the US, not India or China

The hard part is getting marbles (the round things used in the game) rather than other objects made of onyx marble. However, [onyx +marbles] does the trick, giving landofmarbles.com among other results. Bing seems a little harder; [onyx +marbles game] works, though.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[arth1]

Yes, it can be tricky to limit one's searches to what's relevant. The new weighing system of Google makes it trickier, I feel. Earlier, original content and retail sites were bumped up, but now, aggregation sites seem to score as high as original content, and only retailers participating in Google Shopping appear to get a bump, and the other drown in the sea of bulk marketers.

I truly wish there could be a way for the user to weigh categories of web sites. My thinking is that the great majority of end users would have little interest in all the wholesale type web sites, while retailers might want to add weight to these types of sites.
And end-users might want an option to weigh up or down results located in specific countries or regions. (Of course, that could turn into a cat/mouse game, where the Indians/Chinese would use proxies in US/EU to get around it, not caring one bit whether they annoy millions if they can potentially sell one more item)

Re:Thank you Facebook

[coolmadsi]

There truly should be a way to restrict search results by country, not just by language. And rebloggers should be scored down, not up.

If I do a search on google.co.uk (I live in the UK) there is an option to filter results to "Pages from the UK" (they've moved the link which does it to the left instead of under the search input box), but its been an option for years, I think its been there since I started using Google when it was gaining popularity.

Is there a google.us site? Have you tried that and then see if you can limit searches to only the US? I tried the .us link but got forwarded to google.co.uk, with only the option to "go to google.com".

Re:Thank you Facebook

[arth1]

Unfortunately, no. Or, rather, while the UK site can filter on .uk addresses, the US site has .com/.net/.org/.gov, which can be anywhere.
What would be useful is if a GeoIP tag got stored with the search entry, which would allow filtering out .com domains hosted in, say, India or China. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be helpful to cut down on the crud.

So

[hjf]

When does the antitrust trial begin? It's like Microsoft all over again. Facebook abuses its dominant position on the internet (facebook forms in almost every "web 2.0" website, just like IE was "so tightly integrated in windows that it couldn't be removed"). And now they're also trying to destroy competition by blocking them.

In comparison, with IE you can at least download another browser. Facebook won't help you in your transition (or let you delete your stuff from their servers).

Come on, guys... you hated MS for much less than this.

Re:So

[vandenh]

It will start after the one against Google ;)

Re:So

[Lunix Nutcase]

And you also think Google should face antitrust trial for blocking Facebook from getting Gmail contacts, right?

Re:So

[Alrescha]

"Come on, guys... you hated MS for much less than this."

Your historical information is incomplete. The integration of IE into Windows was the least of Microsofts abuses.

A.

Re:So

[E IS mC(Square)]

Which should have started after they finished with Apple, but that never happened, did that?

Re:So

[hjf]

Yes. This is Slashdot. Their motto is: HATE Microsoft, support Linux, use Apple. And deny that Google and Facebook are sleeping with the government. Because Facebook helps antisocial nerds, and Google swears they "do no evil".

Re:So

[hjf]

I use Firefox and Chrome, yet I cannot uninstall IE from the machine. That's product tying. It's a waste of disk space, and worse, it means that even though I have installed a more secure browser, some stupid program is going to be able to load up IE anyway, and get hit by all the security holes in it. To avoid that, I have to waste my internet connection downloading updates for a browser I don't want in the first place.

Uh huh. Waste of disk space. Never mind that the smallest drive you can get is like 500GB, but yes, I'll give you that (just because you're an asshole).

I don't use Facebook. Somehow, simply by not using Facebook, I have been able to avoid having my profile created there, and avoid entering my personal information.

Good for you, chap! I visit some LOCAL NEWS SITES of my tiny town, and if I want to comment I need a FB account. That's product tying. It's a waste of bandwidth, and worse, it means that even though I have other login alternatives, some stupid program web developer is going to be able to load up Facebook code anyway, and get hit by all the stupid JS and face icons. To make things worse, I have to waste my internet connection pictures for people I don't know or want to know in the first place.

So, what have Facebook ever done to me? Absolutely nothing. Yet, you claim we "hated MS for much less than this". How much exactly is "much less than" absolutely nothing?

More than you know.

Re:So

[hjf]

No, I'm not an idiot, thanks for asking, mr AC.
Microsoft got sued because they included a Web browser. Just like Apple does, and some butthurt competition decided that was bad, and sued them. Really stupid to me. But it seems that's the law. So I wonder, why no one is suing Apple for including their own browser AND bundling it with Windows iTunes (installing it without your permission). The same with QuickTime - which I don't want or need.

Re:So

[hjf]

Sure. And for including that stupid +1 button (which you can't remove) in every search result, and not a "Like in Facebook" button. Isn't that kinda like including IE in Windows (which you can't remove), and not Firefox?

Don't be stupid, at the time when Netscape went out of business, IE *was* a better browser. Netscape was just butthurt because of IE, and if you have some memory, you will remember that it happened in the middle of the dotcom bubble, and ended with the bubble bursting. It took away many companies, including Netscape. But Netscape didn't want to admit that they were broke and sued MS. Then MS had to spend millions in a useless lawsuit (which hasn't changed anything), and IE got to dominate the market. Because it took Mozilla several years to come up with a competing browser.

But no one seems to remember Opera, which is still around us. It never went bankrupt or made stupid moves like netscape (wanting to stay on top because of divine right, and whine because "market was took away from them"). Netscape failed because it sucked at business, and because of them, we have a shitty browser (IE6) and a generation of MS haters. If Netscape would have done layoffs and cut spending, they would probably have stay in business, and IE6 would have evolved instead of getting stuck because it had no real competition.

Re:So

[hjf]

No, it all started with the IE suit. The rest was internal memos and stuff ANY COMPANY, INCLUDING GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK, does.

Re:So

[hjf]

Really? My data is all there. They didn't steal anything from me. I can open Office documents just fine with StarOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
Also, microsoft didn't FORCE me to anything. They can't FORCE me to use Office, because there is no MS Thug behind me bullying me to use Office.

And... what the fuck is the problem with proprietary formats? If they want to use them, so be it. All of sudden every format every tool writes to MUST be open and readily available for anyone? What the fuck is wrong with you slashdotters?

Really, fanbois, your arguments are really stupid. And worst of all: you seem to prefer shitty "open" formats rather than good "closed" formats. Like, everyone is using 7z now. What a piece of shit. The compression rate is pretty good, but you need the whole file. You can't partially extract a file, what the hell? I will keep using RAR. Thank you very much.

Re:So

[hjf]

Heh. Sometimes people do get sarcasm.

Go figure.

Re:So

[YojimboJango]

If Google had the monopoly on email contacts like Facebook has a monopoly on social contacts then yes.

Re:So

[PoopCat]

Because Apple do not have monopoly status.

Re:So

[hjf]

Last time I checked, Microsoft doesn't. They don't have a 100% market ownership. iTunes, on the other hand, does have a SIGNIFICANT market share. Isn't that kinda like a monopoly? It was for microsoft.

Also what's with Apple's license? Why can't I buy OS X and legally install it in any PC? They have monopoly in what computers you can install OS X to. Why do I have to be forced to buy Apple to use OS X?

no-one-forces-you-to-use-osx-fanboys, fire away!

Re:So

[BatGnat]

Yes. This is Slashdot. Their motto is: HATE Microsoft, support Linux, use Apple.

Use Apple, what drugs are you on........damn junkies.

Re:So

[jp10558]

ou seem to prefer shitty "open" formats rather than good "closed" formats. Like, everyone is using 7z now. What a piece of shit. The compression rate is pretty good, but you need the whole file. You can't partially extract a file, what the hell? I will keep using RAR.

What? I have no idea what you're commenting on here... What good is a partially extracted file - isn't that just a broken file? I certainly always want the whole file.

Plus, I expect people find 7z or whatever "good enough" vs the cost for WinRAR.

Re:So

[farnsworth]

And you also think Google should face antitrust trial for blocking Facebook from getting Gmail contacts, right?

I don't think people realize how annoying this feature was (is? does it work today?). When facebook was pushing it, I would routinely get emails from people I knew. I had no interest in facebook at all, but they would correlate the sender's network and tell me about all of the other people I know who are using facebook, whether they invited me or not.

Really, google cutting this off has more to do with the *members* of the contact list rather than the person sending the invite.

I don't think Facebook did a good job at letting people know what the planned implications were for providing access to an address book. As a member of many people's address books but not a facebook user, I am glad that Google made this difficult for them.

Re:So

[pinpuke]

I use Firefox and Chrome, yet I cannot uninstall IE from the machine.

If you're on Windows 7 then you havent treid very hard to uninstall IE. Case of user error yet again. sudo google ppl

Re:So

[hjf]

sometimes a broken file is all you get. sometimes you can preview a file - not with 7z, you have to wait for it. Piece of shit. Was it really that difficult to make it a little more robust to errors?

Re:So

[PoopCat]

*sigh* really? we're really going to have to discuss that monopoly status does not mean 100% market share *again*? Oh, I see you know that from your third and fourth sentences, so I can only conclude you are trolling.

Re:So

[asdf7890]

No, it all started with the IE suit.

Yes. But no.

There had been many prior rumblings, the IE thing that pushed the industry over the edge. Once That one was out of the bag and running everyone else dropped out of the woodwork and started ayellin'. If it had not been for IE, something else would have been the catalyst not long later.

Re:So

[shutdown -p now]

What he means is that 7z works like tar.gz in that it concats all files and then compresses the result. This gives better overall compression, but if you get a broken archive, it cannot be extracted at all. RAR has an option of solid archives as well, but defaults to non-solid, where each file in the archive is separately compressed - much like ZIP. So if the damaged part of the archive is in the middle of some file, you can't extract that file, but you can still extract other files. If you have only the first half of the archive, you can extract all complete files up until the point where it breaks off.

Of course, if GP has regular problems with broken archives in 2011, then he should consider upgrading his dial-up Net connection.

Re:So

[jp10558]

That makes more sense, though I would wonder indeed where he's getting incomplete archives regularly... Most any download program is going to support resuming, or the files ought to be small enough to just re-download. . .

ha ha, 'friends'

[roman_mir]

"Being friends" through these sites is sort of like 'having sex' with blow up dolls, but worse, because you actually own the dolls and can do whatever.

On the other hand nobody who uses these sites pays them anythings, so maybe it's not like 'having sex' with blow up dolls.

Or maybe it is, I am not sure anymore. How many libraries of congress can fit in one's 'friends list' on a site like that exactly?

Re:ha ha, 'friends'

[roman_mir]

They sell ads, but the users of sites don't pay the sites directly. The sites get paid by advertisers, so advertisers are the customers and site users are the product that is sold by the site to the advertiser. Do ads work? Of-course they do somewhat, just like spam works somewhat, even if 1% of people buy something because of the ads, then I guess it's worth it, maybe?

The convincing argument for the opposite is that I don't have a user account on one of those sites, and on /. I turned the ads off and I block ads as well, so that's one argument. The other is that I actively make sure to skip all ads I see somehow, that's another. But again, if the ads generate even 1% of the overall buyers, then maybe they are worth it? I just don't think sites like that are worth anything much themselves, but that's a valuation question to those, who buy the stocks.

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Fortunately for Facebook, ~500 million people don't value their information.

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[sakdoctor]

Why does this SHITE always get posted?
For a dating site, would you say the women are the product, and the men are the customers?
No, they are both customers, just not equal due to the pricing structure.

Facebook is structured like any agency, with two products, facing two different sets of customers.

Curious

[benjfowler]

Facebook count on the social network being 'sticky' enough to retain their users and make it hard to move. Obviously, with competitors which don't suck, they need to play dirty.

I was keen to see if their backup feature exported email addresses. Sure enough, it doesn't. So there goes my idea of writing a script to extract my contacts out of Facebook backups suitable for import into Google+.

About the only way this state of affairs will change, is if the bad publicity gets bad enough for Facebook to be shamed into doing the right thing.

Smart move by Facebook -- pissing off their hardcore techie users. Very classy.

Re:Curious

[preaction]

The hardcore techy users are not their base. Their base are the millions of 13-23 year olds whose social lives are completely run via Facebook. The loss of your occasional status update is not going to impact them very much.

Re:Curious

[Lunix Nutcase]

Smart move by Facebook -- pissing off their hardcore techie users.

So an irrelevant minority that they will never miss?

Re:Curious

[Lunix Nutcase]

You mean the irrelevant minority that drove Firefox to, what, 40%+ adoption rate?

Yes, I do. Just because some group may have (and your assertion is highly questionable due to the high usage of Netscape among non-techies before Firefox even came out) helped push the adoption of one piece of software in no way hold any sway over the adoption of some other product or service.

Seriously, non-techies can often be heavily influenced by what their techie friends tell them, since they realize they don't know computers and techies do. Hence, techies can have a disproportionate influence on adoption.

Great, now prove that the huge userbase of Facebook had anything at all to do with hardcore techies.

Re:Curious

[SmilingBoy]

and your assertion is highly questionable due to the high usage of Netscape among non-techies before Firefox even came out

Mozilla+Firefox+Netscape had a market share of less than 3% in May 2004. IE had 95%. The rest was split between Safari, Opera and a number of less used browsers.

I think that if a browser is endorsed by the techies AND brings advantages to the masses, it will succeed.

This was the case with IE succeeding over Netscape Navigator, Firefox succeeding over IE and now Chrome becoming a strong contender to succeed over Firefox in the next couple of years.

Re:Curious

[TangoMargarine]

I was keen to see if their backup feature exported email addresses. Sure enough, it doesn't. So there goes my idea of writing a script to extract my contacts out of Facebook backups suitable for import into Google+.

You would think they would include your friend list in that "Download All My Shit" option. But of course they don't?

being a /.'er...

[Thud457]

I sure am glad I don't have any friends so I don't get sucked into any of these corporate loyalty scams and have my identity stolen.

Removed from "real time" search

[countertrolling]

This kinda proves that Google is not really a "search engine" per se, as if we needed any verification of that.. I guess we all have to send out our own crawlers to actually find anything outside the advertising realm. It's not that I mind seeing Twitter or similar removed, but I always wonder about the truly valuable stuff that's not being indexed because there's no ad link or contract involved.

Are there any useful alternatives?

Re:Removed from "real time" search

[Lazy Jones]

Are there any useful alternatives?

Not at this time I suppose, but I wish projects like YaCy would make some progress / gain more attention.

Re:Removed from "real time" search

[c6gunner]

This kinda proves that Google is not really a "search engine" per se, as if we needed any verification of that..

The hell? Are you reading the same article as the rest of us?

I guess we all have to send out our own crawlers to actually find anything outside the advertising realm. It's not that I mind seeing Twitter or similar removed, but I always wonder about the truly valuable stuff that's not being indexed because there's no ad link or contract involved.

This has nothing to do with advertising, and little to do with indexing. In order for the "real-time search" to be viable, Google needs Twitter to send them a constant stream of all tweets. Twitter has decided to stop doing so, ergo Google can no longer provide the "real-time search" functionality for twitter. They can, and do, continue to provide indexing of tweets - it's just that they now index them the same way they index the vast majority of the internet, meaning there's a significant delay between the time a tweet is posted and the time it becomes available through a google search.

I get that you're on some strange crusade against google, and that's fine, but it's no excuse for making up half-baked nonsense.

Re:Removed from "real time" search

[countertrolling]

results by Bing
built with Yahoo

Thanks, but no thanks

Re:Removed from "real time" search

[icebraining]

Google Search is a search engine. Google Realtime isn't. They're different products.

Re:Removed from "real time" search

[countertrolling]

This has nothing to do with advertising...

?? Google's entire premise is based on advertising. That's what put them where they are today.

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[betterunixthanunix]

For a dating site, would you say the women are the product, and the men are the customers?

No, but for a cattle farm I would say that cows are the product. The farmers feed and generally take care of the herd, but nobody would claim that there is some kind of "tit for tat" relationship.

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[Abstrackt]

I'd like to believe a reasonable percentage of those people use fake or unhelpful-to-Facebook information. For example, my political views are listed as "yes" and my religion is listed as "Pastafarian".

Fortunately redirecting through Yahoo still works.

[morgosmaci]

Just sign into yahoo using your facebook account and it will even create a throw away yahoo acount for you and import all of your facebook friends as contacts. Then just export those contacts into a vcf and import them into a contact group in gmail. (Or import them directly into G+).

Turnaround is fair play

[Alan Shutko]

Last year, Google blocked Facebook from accessing gmail contacts. This is just tit for tat.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704353504575596913266928110.html

Re:Turnaround is fair play

[imbaczek]

that's only because facebook never allowed google their contacts in the first place.

Re:Turnaround is fair play

[makomk]

They blocked Facebook from accessing GMail contacts directly because Facebook wouldn't allow them to import Facebook contacts directly. You can still download your entire GMail contacts list yourself in a multitude of formats and do whatever you like with them, including importing them into Facebook if you really want to, whereas this news article is about Facebook blocking their own users from doing the same kind of mass-export.

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[betterunixthanunix]

That might not matter quite as much as you think. Do you only have nonsense conversations with your contacts on Facebook? Do people only post nonsense messages on your "wall?" Do you only click on random links? Facebook collects a lot more information than what you overtly give them.

Re:Wrong party

[mcvos]

Why would they? Those might well be their biggest sponsors.

Storm computing

[Errol backfiring]

Is when cloud computing is done by thunderclouds - battling each other!

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[Abstrackt]

For a dating site, would you say the women are the product, and the men are the customers?
No, they are both customers, just not equal due to the pricing structure.

You picked a bad analogy; you're both a product and a customer on a dating site. You (customer) browse the selection of men/women (product) available and they (customer) do the same to you (product).

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[maxume]

Can you name a similar species that is anywhere near as prolific?

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

I'm not sure what Facebook considers helpful, but from a statistical perspective a semi-unique joke-response probably reveals more than an ubiquitous sincere response. Take two people who list Christian on their profile, and take two people who list Pastafarian (you aren't the only one). I suspect that the latter pair has more in common than the former pair.

well...

[Tei]

I hope the existence of this closed gardens are a temporal phenomenom on the internet. We will learn as much as possible about how people want to interact on the internet (because everything is possible), then we could implement that as a open protocol, so it avoid all the problem of closed gardens.

Anyway, seems to me that is not the time for open protocols, not yet.

Re:well...

[boristdog]

Has anyone developed an open protocol for social networks yet?

I've been thinking about doing such a thing, but life keeps getting in the way.

Re:well...

[tepples]

There is Diaspora, but it appears to be invite-only though.

Woohoo! Down with Twitter

[Compaqt]

Finally, Identica can pick up some steam!

(The geeks' version of Twitter, if you don't already know.)

Re:Woohoo! Down with Twitter

[muuh-gnu]

Twitter itself is worthless as a technology, as it's basically an IRC server publicly displaying querys and #channel logs, nowadays fancily rebranded as #hashtags. The primary worth of Twitter consists of influential users publishing information exclusively on twitter. Nobody important publishes exclusively on Identica, so nobody uses Identica.

Google+

[Snarky Jones]

I am seriously hearting google more and more these days. They make it so where I mind less and less about being trapped on the grid.

Re:Fortunately redirecting through Yahoo still wor

[perryizgr8]

nice advice man! *goes and creates yahoo account*

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[zlogic]

Don't forget that the facebook "like" buttons are collecting data on which sites you're visiting.

Useful?

[vlm]

reader dkd903 points out that Google has been busy removing Twitter from real time search, due to a contract expiry with Twitter.

Has anyone out there in /. land ever google'd for something and found the answer in a twitter post? Has anyone on /. ever seen a twitter post containing something that could theoretically be something someone would search for?

I imagine its about as common as searching for airline tickets and finding a UFO.

Re:Useful?

[Sepodati]

It's not regular search, it's "realtime search". You choose a topic and see a stream of news and social network posts regarding the topic. I've used it in the past to follow sporting or big news events to see what people were saying about it.

Re:Useful?

[synapse7]

The twitter results are most likely below the 15,000 content farm results with ads. I'm finding that twitter is often used as the main source of news for certain organizations and companies, this reason alone may be what motivates me to start a twitter account.

Re:Useful?

[RJFerret]

Yes, I discovered realtime search was gone when I tried to share a Twitter conversation with a friend who wants a musical instrument.

Separately, a friend was engaged in an urban treasure hunt, in a different state, I was able to tell her where a person her team needed to find was, since he shared it an hour before entirely separately.

Let's see, I've used it to learn about one-day sales/promotions, I've used it to learn about status of servers (the first place "Is such-and-such up?" seems to get asked is Twitter), I've used it to discover contest answers, I've used it to learn of natural disasters (tornadoes, thundersnow) and follow natural wonder sightings (aurora borealis).

I've used it to discover police speed traps.

I've used it to learn about a local power station explosion as it was happening, rather than the news media interpretation after the fact.

Just because you can't conceive of things you'd want to search that are topical in just minutes or hours doesn't mean they don't exist. ;-)

Also, sadly Twitter's own search is relatively ineffective, often not revealing messages that conform to the search terms.

Google also provided a useful graph plotting frequency of your search term over time.

A better question would be which I used more frequently, old web-based Google, or Twitter-based searches. Given that I tend to go to sources of info (Wikipedia, Twitter, Flicker, YouTube, Amazon, eBay), I tend not to do random shot-in-the-dark web searches too frequently.

Re:Fortunately redirecting through Yahoo still wor

[Lifyre]

And suddenly Yahoo is relevant again, if only for a short while...

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[thehodapp]

And frankly it's quite sad that many of these people will allow their networked lives to become that much more decentralized. Meanwhile I'm switching to Diaspora where I actually get to control my information.

Glaring security holes

[Neil Boekend]

Can't Google just download the user's FB data through one of the glaring security holes we keep hearing of?

Orkut

[tepples]

With Google+ the sample of people you could network with is essentially random.

The same thing happened to Orkut, if I remember correctly.

If a brick and mortar business tried this

[Frankie70]

Once you post that, they'll all get an email telling them about google+. google are leaving the signup door open for hours on and hours off each day, it seems, so tell them to keep trying - I do it in the status update.

Can you imagine inviting your friends to a bar saying - it remains open for many hours on & many hours off each day. Keep coming there & checking it out again & again to see if it's open.

Long-run implications of not being evil

[tepples]

Last time I checked, Google was a big corporation determined to increase its revenue by all possible means, just like Facebook. If they have turned into a charity recently, I must have missed it.

People who invest in Google do so under the expectation that Google's self-imposed guideline of not being evil will help Google's earnings in the long run.

Re:Long-run implications of not being evil

[TheSpoom]

"Don't be evil" died with the IPO. Don't kid yourself.

Re:Long-run implications of not being evil

[David Gerard]

Buzz: "Don't be evil. Do, however, be stupid."

Re:Long-run implications of not being evil

[arth1]

People who invest in Google do so under the expectation that Google's self-imposed guideline of not being evil will help Google's earnings in the long run.

next year, not what returns they may get ten years down the road. By then, they'll be invested in other companies if that's more profitable.

Re:Long-run implications of not being evil

[arth1]

People who invest in Google do so under the expectation that Google's self-imposed guideline of not being evil will help Google's earnings in the long run.

(Let's try that again. Slashdot 3.0 seems to eat the end character of my closing tags every now and then unless I add an extra line break)

I wish. Truth is that people who invest are in it for the short run. They care about what return they get next year, not what returns they may get ten years down the road. By then, they'll be invested in other companies if that's more profitable.

Re:Whatever.

[Abstrackt]

Holy ad hominem, Batman! But let's get down to the meat of it then.

I agree that you're a user receiving a service. A customer pays for goods and services, when's the last time you paid Facebook? You might be a customer of whoever produces Farmville or any number of other apps but that still doesn't make you a customer of Facebook. Saying you're a customer of Facebook because you use it and contribute to it is tantamount to me saying I'm a customer of Wikipedia.

So, back to the original question then, who are Facebook's customers? Advertisers. There's a whole pile of data waiting to be scraped and analyzed on Facebook, a marketing firm's wet dream; people voluntarily contributing all kinds of information about their location, education, political and religious beliefs and what kind of people they associate with. If you personally paid even a penny to Facebook I would agree that you're a customer but reality is that you're helping to produce the product. Maybe it's better to refer to Facebook's users should be referred to as unpaid labor rather than a product?

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[TheRaven64]

In my experience, most of these people just didn't read the ToS. When people ask me why I'm not on Facebook, I quote a few of the rights that you grant to Facebook for anything that you upload. The universal reaction has been shock, usually followed by 'is that legal?'.

Title?

[dmexs]

From reading the article the app is not a Google+ app, it's a Google Chrome extension that is being used by many for Google+. Saying it like the title says it implies a disservice on FB's part towards Google+ which may or may not be the case.

Re:Fortunately redirecting through Yahoo still wor

[SmilingBoy]

Nice; unfortunately it only exports e-mail addresses and not phone numbers, IM address, etc.

Re:Google fired the first shot

[Shoe Puppet]

They have open-sourced their entire software stack

Where can I download "Facecode"?

and the hardware too!

...you're an idiot.

Odd

[assertation]

Google+ isn't even open to the general public yet, but there are already 3rd utils, web sites, etc..

Feeling left out.

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[jp10558]

Ehh, I've been telling people Facebook is evil for a few years now, since a conference presentation really drove that home for me.

I can't think of anyone who agreed with me, or who cared about the privacy aspects (who had not already come to the same conclusion on their own).

Re:Why use Google+?

[BatGnat]

But as far as I know, a grand total of zero of them (including me) dislike it even remotely enough to even look at a competitors app

Sounds like you haven't asked anyone...

Re:Fortunately redirecting through Yahoo still wor

[semi-extrinsic]

It looks like Yahoo is trying to block this route too, now. When I click "Import contacts", both the Hotmail and Gmail icons show up and can be clicked, but the Facebook icon is not there, and the white space where it should be can not be clicked. Similarly, when i log out and try to "Log in via Facebook", the popup window is just an empty html document -.-

However, if you take a look at the source for the Yahoo login page, you will find a link that looks like https :// open.login.yahoo.com/openid/yrp/signin?idp=facebook&ts=1309896779&.intl=no&.done=http%3A%2F%2Fno.yahoo.com%2F&rpcrumb=P4KH1f%2fCbF4&.src=fpctx
and this link still works.

Off-topic: remind me to Never look at Yahoo html again. My eyes, they bleed!

No lock-in

[DrYak]

Last time I checked, Google was a big corporation determined to increase its revenue by all possible means, just like Facebook

The subtle method is that Facebook is trying as hard as possible to lock you in. Only recently did they start to cave in to pressure to open up some small parts. Chat used to be 100% proprietary. Now they support an XMPP proxy (so you can use 3rd party software like Pidgin/Adium), but it's only a proxy, no way to interoperate with other XMPP chats (GTalk, Jabber, etc.) Same for messages, only recently after much end-user insistence did they start supporting e-Mail standards. Same with picture, only recently did they add an export function. They finally accepted making a "backup" function, but it's far from optimal (only download a huge monolithic ZIP with everything, after an e-mail exchange. Half of the data is omitted. etc. It's as if they were required to provide the service by law and then tried to make as less practical as possible).
They count on making poeple as much dependent on FB making it as much difficult to leave it as possible. And then just use the network effect to retain everyone else.

Meanwhile Google has the whole "data liberation front" going on. And to quote the ads, they know that by making it more easy to leave them, they'll attract more users and interest.

Re:Fortunately redirecting through Yahoo still wor

[MikeDaSpike]

You're probably using a facebook blocking application/extension. I had to disable Facebook Disconnect before the icon appeared.

Re:People are Facebook's product, not their custom

[cavebison]

people are Facebook's product

Kind of, but not quite. The *connections* are the product. Between you and your friends/pages/groups/interests/etc. Not you per se, but what you say about yourself.

This is why it's dumb to friend all those useless interest pages. People love having "I like fruit loops" on their profile, even though it ads absolutely nothing to their interaction with others, unless it is a group with activities or conversation they want to keep up with.

Yet groups, community & social stuff, doesn't give Facebook marketing much value. The value is in anything you like which can be turned into market metrics. Real communication and community interaction which is personally valuable is exactly what FB doesn't find valuable at all.

In that sense, the "social network" aspect of FB is ironically kind of beside the point.

Re:Fortunately redirecting through Yahoo still wor

[semi-extrinsic]

Ah, yes, you're quite right, I've blocked it to avoid facebook knowing my every move. Nevermind, then.