Google No Longer Claims Facebook Will “Trap” Users. Or Do They?

Wednesday, 17 November 2010 17:13

Google No Longer Claims Facebook Will “Trap” Users. Or Do They?

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There’s a new twist to the Facebook-Google contact data export brouhaha. It looks like the warning Google issued last week to Facebook users who tried to export their Gmail contact to the network has been removed. If you try to import your contacts from Gmail now on Facebook, Google’s warning to you that your contacts information will be effectively trapped inside

Facebook without the ability to re-export the data, no longer appears. But the warning still exists on the web. Weird, huh?

So several things could be taking place here. Facebook either found a way to workaround this warning or Google and Facebook came to an agreement over this. Or Google decided to stop showing the warning without an agreement with Facebook.

For background on the whole issue, Google blocked Facebook API access to download Google contacts. Facebook hacked its way around that, and Google subsequently issued a statement that they were “disappointed”. Facebook Platform engineer Mike Vernal then responded in the comments of one of our blog posts about the slap fight, defending Facebook’s policy and calling it – cough – “consistent”.

Last Friday, Google started posting the warning to users who tried to import their Gmail contact to Facebook. They still allowed users to export the data but the warning was very clear. Not it’s not there.

One thing is for sure. If Facebook did find a workaround, this will surely escalate the battle between the two companies.

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