blocked Facebook from using its Contacts API to pull in Google contacts for a user who wants to build a network of friends — a very common way of starting a profile or adding to it. Google justified the move, saying Facebook had no similar open API and wasn’t playing fairly with user data.

Facebook made no public statements about the block.

Then, on Monday night, as first reported by Techcrunch, Facebook basically told Google to “shove it,” by giving users a way around that block: By linking deeply into Gmail’s contact export system, it helps users download a CSV contact file and then re-upload it to Facebook.

Facebook did not respond last week when Wired.com inquired about its policy of sucking in data through other companies’ open APIs, without making it possible to export your Facebook contacts, unless you are using a service from a company that is “friends” with Facebook, such as Yahoo or Microsoft.

Technically, Google could block Facebook’s new hack, leading to a cat-and-mouse game over user data, but Google is opting for the high road — at least for now.

“We’re disappointed that Facebook didn’t invest their time in making it possible for their users to get their contacts out of Facebook,” a Google spokesman said by e-mail. “As passionate believers that people should be able to control the data they create, we will continue to allow our users to export their Google contacts.”

While Google has long been one of the leaders in the data-portability movement, their motives here are not purely philosophical. The search and advertising giant has lagged behind Facebook in creating “social” online services, and the company is rumored to be launching a new effort, dubbed “Google Me,” in the near future. One key for that success will be getting new users to copy their contacts from other networks, most importantly Facebook, into Google’s system.

While Facebook has said that it’s “complicated” to figure out how to lets users export their friends’ contact information, there seems to be no philosophical objection to the practice at the company. Users of Microsoft and Yahoo’s e-mail services can pull that data out, and Android 2.2 mobile phone users can also painlessly merge their Facebook and Gmail contacts.

Instead, what we are seeing is an example of how Facebook is still, at times, a dorm-room operation, run by a defiant group of youngsters. They now seem to see Google as a substitute for the college authority figures that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once thumbed his nose at.

But Zuckerberg and Co. aren’t in college anymore, and there’s nothing charming or rebellious about Facebook’s data hypocrisy and their defensiveness about being called to the carpet about it.

A grownup company worthy of a multibillion dollar valuation and the trust of 500 million users would have simply acknowledged that Google had a point, said that export was complicated, that they were working on it and would have an open API in a couple of weeks.

But that’s not Facebook’s style and it’s not clear it ever will be.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

Follow us for disruptive tech news: Ryan Singel and Epicenter on Twitter.

See Also:

• Google Calls Out Facebook’s Data Hypocrisy, Blocks Gmail Import
• Love Google. Hate Facebook. Here’s Why
• Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Net
• What Do We Want? Our Data. When Do We Want It? Now!

Authors: Ryan Singel

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