Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

http://www.google.com/mail/help/contacts_export_confirm.html

by bjonathan • 16 years ago

470 169 16 years ago

google.com

ukdm• 16 years ago

Is this a new warning page that has been added following Facebook's actions, or one that has been around a while?

bjonathan• 16 years ago

Apparently it's a new

spdy• 16 years ago

This gets better and better. Time to grab some popcorn.

And i really like this move from google.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

Actually this is boring - where are the HD explosions? The glib remarks by the heros? The hot babe they are trying to save?

Even Michael Bay was better than this.

ax0n• 16 years ago

I used it to register a complaint even though I have no blood in this game. In general, I agree with Google's stance on this one, despite the fact that the motives are anything but altruistic as their verbiage tries to imply.

anupj• 16 years ago

yes, it's definitely new and it looks likely that this was added to warn facebook users who are tyring to export their google contacts.

etherealG• 16 years ago

facebook's actions?

corin_• 16 years ago

It's so nice of these two companies to be spending their time and money creating this great entertainment for all of us

linhat• 16 years ago

entertainment aside, i just really wonder, what comes next, as i am afraid there will be only one true loser, us, the user.

pama2• 16 years ago

Maybe this can inspire some better movies?

jmeyers• 16 years ago

Maybe this can inspire the replacement for Face book.

trevelyan3• 16 years ago

Google is being silly. First because they're breaking the usability of THEIR own site out of an invented vendetta against a company that is just using the feature they created and made available. If they don't believe people should be able to export data from Gmail they should stop offering it generally and compete against other email providers with a more closed platform, not whine about reciprocity from sites that are not in their business.

Second because they are in the wrong. The last thing in the world I want is my friends on Facebook to be able to give MY email address to random third-parties in return for free virtual pets or whatever Zynga is giving away this week. Google's moralism would mean much more spam and a far worse experience with Facebook. My being a "friend" with someone does not imply permission to let them give my contact information to third parties. Who is Google to say otherwise?

moxiemk1• 16 years ago

Facebook has, I assume, the ability to discern me from an app, and so easily could give me a way to export my friends contact information made visible to me while simultaneously not giving it to Farmville.

trevelyan3• 16 years ago

Why should anyone consider it reasonable to insist that someone else needs to create an API that selectively differentiates between users based on arbitrary and easily spoofed technical criteria? This makes no sense. It is expensive technically and expensive in terms of the development time and effort needed to maintain it. Not to mention easily fooled.

Google is keeping its data export open because it's providing an email service and is in competition with Yahoo and Hotmail. Perhaps they're not so sure about whether that is a good idea. If they think their business model has a problem they should fix the problem, not lecture Facebook about how the company runs its own business.

fragmede2• 16 years ago

And then Farmville-et-al resort to hidden iframes and screen-scraping, and there's no way for Facebook or normal users to differentiate.

joakin4• 16 years ago

Don't get it wrong, facebook it's not protecting you against anything, they are just monopolizing your relationships so that you won't move on with ease to other services.

trevelyan3• 16 years ago

What does Facebook's motives have to do with anything? The question under discussion is whether a random stranger who can convince one of my friends to sign up for a virtual pet should suddenly be able to spam me.

Facebook has good reasons not to open their social graph -- and Google's lecturing them about noblesse oblige on this front is silly. Google should make decisions about its data portability policy based on its own needs. If they don't like this kind of access close the API. Keeping it open but shrill and insensible like this is amateur.

reledi2• 16 years ago

Google is trying to monopolize your relationships (i.e. they give you an option while advising which option you should take), while pointing out that Facebook is monopolizing your relationships. They're taking different paths to reach the same end.

joakin4• 16 years ago

Fortunately this gives more info to average users about their data and what's happening with it

Maybe they will care some day ...

RoyceFullerton• 16 years ago

"I recognize that once it’s been imported to another service, that service may not allow me to export it back out."

I could see how this could scare the average user into thinking their contacts are moved from Google to facebook and stuck there, thus loosing their ability to use them within Google's products.

Do you think this is the intention?

racerrick• 16 years ago

It's a big "F U" to Facebook because they don't reciprocate.

jerryr• 16 years ago

The wording is definitely questionable. The savvy user will understand that if contacts are imported into Facebook and maintained there, changes can't be exported or synched back to Google--a valid concern. But the current warning copy doesn't quite capture that and seems to imply, as you've mentioned, that your data is moved.

Google is so engineering-oriented, I can't tell if this was an honest, poor choice of wording or intentionally vague for the purpose of inducing fear. I'm not against the warning if it's in the spirit of educating users about how to keep their data "free", but if this is indeed vendetta as others here are suggesting...well, that's Google's prerogative, but this method would seem a bit unprofessional. If they want to attack Facebook, I'd have more respect if they were explicit about it in this warning.

eiji• 16 years ago

Facebook could allow users to "Opt-in" an email export. If I'm not "Opt-in", only my name would be exported by me and my friends.

We all know that Opt-in is like "does not exist", but they could at least say they are open.

edit: They could even sell it as a privacy feature ...

yock• 16 years ago

Facebook would have to offer such a facility in order to allow users to opt-in, and there seems to be plenty of evidence that they do not want to do that.

NolF2• 16 years ago

Facebook already offers your contact information to Microsoft and Yahoo. However, I think friends who have emails set as "only me" or equivalent do not export. I tried the feature today and 10% of my contacts did not export to yahoo :/

pama2• 16 years ago

I just used this link and saved my contacts, just in case this story leads to more dramatic actions. I also tested the register complaint button and, sure enough, my complaint was duly registered (though nobody explained what this means). Interestingly enough, I could have done both in one step, by checking both boxes and getting a long button reading: "download my contact information and register complaint".

illumin82• 16 years ago

The warning says: "Here’s the not-so-fine print. You have been directed to this page from a site that doesn’t allow you to re-export your data to other services, essentially locking up your contact data about your friends."

I think this is misleading - Doesn't Facebook allow you to download all of your data, just like Google? As much as I dislike Facebook's privacy policies, the mudslinging seems a little thick from both sides.

Facebook and Google - two of the biggest privacy violating companies on the planet. May you live in interesting times, indeed.

cpr• 16 years ago

No, you can't get your "friends"' email info out.

illumin82• 16 years ago

I see, thanks for the clarification. So, you can download all of your pictures and wall posts, but not contact data.

daten• 16 years ago

There are several apps like this one that claim to export your friends and email address to CSV format.

http://apps.facebook.com/friendstocsv/

nkassis2• 16 years ago

Facebook to my knowledge does not let you export your friends email addresses in a way that they could be synced with your email service. I think that if they did, it would be beneficial to everyone. Their claim that email addresses are private is bogus. They could add buttons to the privacy settings that would allow a user to block their email from being access by friends. There is no valid, as in non anti competitive, reason to hold on to names and email of your Facebook friends.

I'm just waiting for Facebook to release a real email service ala gmail in the near future to escalate this battle.

NolF2• 16 years ago

There already is an option not to show your email to friends. Just set the email field to 'Only Me'.

fragmede2• 16 years ago

How much 'real-er' does FB messaging need to get?

I ask because FB messaging, like Gmail, is already available on the two platforms that matter today - web browsers and smartphones. Yeah, you need a FB account to use FB messaging, but if you don't have Facebook, you're not a real person, at least according to Quora (along with any other FB-connect only site). (Quora has since backpedaled on that stance.)

The obvious interoperability move - letting you reply-by-email to FB messages is something they'll never do, because it means you don't have to sign into FB, which they can't have.

salvadors• 16 years ago

You can export your friends' email addresses from Facebook to sites that they have a deal with - e.g. Yahoo Mail.

You can then export from there as CSV etc., and pull them into other services. I set up a one-time Ymail account just to try this out, and it worked just fine.

So any claims by Facebook that they can't do this due to users' privacy etc are completely bogus. It's just that Google won't give them money to do it.

nkassis2• 16 years ago

I'm just waiting for the backroom deal between the two that will allow two way sharing between only them.

jrockway• 16 years ago

But Google lets you export your data. So if Facebook exports to Google, then your data can go anywhere, and we've won!

patio11• 16 years ago

It appears that Google only allows you to export your data as long as the metrics show that no significant number of people actually do so.

subbu2• 16 years ago

Not likely especially when the big MS daddy is looking around!

nailer2• 16 years ago

huh? Microsoft make windows and office, and don't have a dominant web presence.

paraschopra• 16 years ago

"Select one or more options. Cancel and go back"

I liked this. So Godfatheresque!

reledi2• 16 years ago

The other options are the check boxes. New buttons will appear when checked.

netaddict• 16 years ago

The check boxes aren't even visible in my chrome. http://imgur.com/qMpND

I don't know if this is a bug.

atourino2• 16 years ago

It seems to me that their wording pushes their anti Facebook data locking agenda, intimidating novice users. To me, this goes against their "don't be evil" company motto.

maggit• 16 years ago

To me it embodies their "don't be evil" company motto. I think Facebook is being evil here, and Google is fighting the good cause.

However, I can see your angle as well. It seems that the world is not black and white after all :(

atourino2• 16 years ago

That Facebook is evil or not is irrelevant, I think. (I happen to think that their interests and the privacy interests of their users are not aligned at all). Google is fighting the good cause, ok, I agree. But the method they used in this instance is not the best. They could've simply said: "Hey look man. Facebook wants us to give them your contact data. These are the possible consequences: 1., 2., 3. Are you sure?" Their current wording implies (to me) that a user's data is all going to be imported and kept inside of FB and nowhere else (which is a key point), which is not true as Google holds the user's data as well. There will be divergence afterwards as the user begins to use Google and FB in different ways. But yeah, I do see that FB is not an easy place to get your data out of, but Google is using users' data as a pressure point to force FB's hand. What would be interesting to find out is if they are defending privacy because it's a noble thing to do, or if they are just defending privacy because it happens to benefit them in some other way.

edit: added "and nowhere else (which is a key point)"

dsplittgerber2• 16 years ago

It allegedly registered my complaint without me being logged-in, so whatever they do, it's for show only?

This reeks of a cheap shot.

stuartloxton• 16 years ago

Just because your not signed in doesn't mean it can't register a complaint - by not tracking username or personal details with the complaint the point of being signed in is reduced to nothing. They can't even make sure you do it twice without tracking your user ID (which they won't do because they could then get username or password).

Therefore being able to register a complaint not signed in seems odd but fine.

dsplittgerber2• 16 years ago

That's the whole point I was making. When it doesn't register username or any kind of identifiable information, it just counts 'votes', which doesn't amount to anything, as in the end it's just an arbitrary number open to manipulations.

What do they want to achieve by having the user click a button just to feel good?

alain940402• 16 years ago

What bothers me is that Google is taking the stance that they have the right to lock my data in their service if they feel like it.

That's why that position, to me, is untenable. Don't do evil indeed: you just conceded the other side (Facebook) their main argument (that they don't have to be open, only if they feel like it).

mquander2• 16 years ago

In what way is Google taking that stance? Last I checked, Google was taking the exactly opposite stance.

http://www.dataliberation.org/

alain940402• 16 years ago

Obviously I must have phrased my position wrong, based on the reaction.

Yes, they are taking that stance, since they are imposing conditions on exporting data from gmail. If I owned and could do anything I wanted with my data on gmail, then Google could not impose restrictions. They just did (in their API restrictions). That's what I'm very concerned about.

ck2• 16 years ago

I approve a warning 1000% - it's not like they are stopping you from exporting.

This will slow down my AOL-using friends who gave away all their contact info to Facebook and now I get pelted with spam from Facebook using my name and list of friends (and I don't even have a Facebook account).

Google has never spammed me or share my name and location, Facebook does it all the time, pick who's more evil.

jasonkester6• 16 years ago

Actually, it is like they stop you from exporting. Here's the message I get when I try to import my contacts into Faceboook:

Google did not return any of your contacts. You can still find your friends on Facebook by uploading a file of your Gmail contacts below.

... followed by instructions on how to download my gmail contacts to a file and re-upload them.

So it seems that Google's implementation of their "whining at you about their problems while you're just trying to get on with your life" page is broken.

The end result is that you cannot export your contacts from Gmail at the present.

dedward• 16 years ago

You can export them just fine - they just aren't allowing a 3rd party site to automatically import them - they're making you consciously do it yourself.

To someone who can do it either way, this may just seem like an annoyance, but a great many people won't grasp the severity of what they are about to do by handing their credentials for gmail over to facebook.

abrahamsen2• 16 years ago

Clicking on the link to the "trap" page and checking "Proceed with exporting this data" brings up a "Download my contact information" button. Clicking that gives me a csv file with all my Google contact information.

So I can certainly export my Google contact data. I don't have a Facebook account, so I don't know whether it can import it. But the data is there, in an easy to parse format.

kmavm2• 16 years ago

> This will slow down my AOL-using friends who gave away all their contact info to Facebook and now I get pelted with spam ...

Right; there are practical usability problems with allowing willy-nilly access to your contact list. Some of your contacts have now given your email address to a company with which you never wanted to have a relationship.

Which is precisely Facebook's reasoning for not providing an API to download your friends' email addresses. Thanks for providing a concrete reminder of the legitimacy of this choice.

confuzatron• 16 years ago

...not to mention, a concrete reminder of the hypocrisy of Facebook's argument.

"Facebook - we protect your contacts, so unscrupulous websites can't spam them like we do."

ewjordan2• 16 years ago

This is a red herring. Facebook lets me choose whether my friends can give away literally anything else that's part of my Facebook presence to third party apps. In fact, there's a strong recommendation that I allow as much access to apps as possible, in the name of a "more social" experience. They let apps that I've never used spam me daily, I don't really get the sense that they care whether they force me into relationships with companies I have no interest in, as long as it happens within Facebook.

Why should I not get to decide whether to expose my e-mail address? If I want to, I'm allowed to set my e-mail address to "Everyone" visibility in my profile, literally the only thing I'm not allowed to do is expose it via the API.

That's a very deliberate choice, and maybe I'm a cynic, but it strikes me as mighty telling that the lack of API access to the e-mail part of the social graph is just about the only barrier in the way of Google being able to reconstitute the entire Gmail intersection of Facebook's social graph (Facebook UIDs don't suffice, because Google can't match these to e-mail addresses without the users explicitly doing so for them).

jfager• 16 years ago

What is Facebook's reasoning, then, for providing an API to download complete friend lists, location, real names, and other data a user didn't wade through privacy settings to lock down?

Handing information to a company with which a user never wanted to have a relationship is bad when it results in spam-filled inboxes, which end users might notice and directly associate with FB's policies. As long as the potential abuse is hidden from the user's view, though, FB wholeheartedly endorses it.

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

> Which is precisely Facebook's reasoning for not providing an API to download your friends' email addresses.

So why does it give it to Yahoo mail and Hotmail? Please answer that question.

Relevant link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889378

rodericksilva2• 16 years ago

Ummm...they are my contacts.

"Facebook's reasoning for not providing an API" is because they want to protect me from other Facebook type companies? Really?

...or is it that they don't want us moving our data to another social network?

Let's get real. Facebook can spin it however they want. We all know what's up!

GrandMasterBirt• 16 years ago

1000% eh? So you hire 9 slaves to approve alongside you? Interesting. Are they on your contacts? Hmmmm?

Much much much more wiery when people give out their email password to any other service period. Plus why would you care if you can't get the info out of facebook? You already have it in gmail. I dunno, I feel like I dodged so many bullets by not using facebook.

axavier• 16 years ago

http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/orkut-slows-hemorraging-to-...

Relevant quote from Google:

"Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks - when a user friends someone they don’t then expect that person to be easily able to send that contact information to a third party along with hundreds of other addresses with just one click"

Lets recap:

1. Users use data exporter en masse to abandon Orkut.

2. Google breaks the exporter. Supposedly a bug, coincidentally when people are actually now using it.

3. Google changes the exporter so emails are no longer included.

4. Google says social networks shouldn't be expected to allow mass email exportation.

5. 12 months pass

6. Google breaks the gmail exporter to Facebook. Social networks apparently are now expected export all e-mails. Press eats it up.

Look, I'm not arguing that email exporting should or shouldn't be allowed. I don't really want my friends giving my email to Farmville so they get a golden banana, but it's not the end of the world. What I don't get though, is people talking about this like Google is some godly force of good, championing the rights of users against the evil Facebook.

Please. Google is getting scared, and made a calculated (albeit hypocritical) business decision to try and slow down Facebook's growth. The rest of this is BS PR spin and Techcrunch sensationalism to fan the drama fires.

DjDarkman• 16 years ago

The GMail exporter is not broken, it just warns you.

gizmomagico3• 16 years ago

This is such bullshit.

A service that won't let me "get my contact information out"? Nice way to frame this in terms of "openness" too, apparently riding "open" for all it's worth with Android is not enough.

Can I just "get out" all of my personal information from Google? No? Isn't Google "open" enough to let me do it?

We think this is an important thing for you to know before you import your data there.

Did you also think it was super duper important with a cherry and smarmy bullshit on top to let me know before you gave Facebook my GMail contacts behind the scenes when I was registering there earlier this year?

No, and I was disgusted when Facebook started suggesting them for "friends" right away.

moultano2• 16 years ago

>Can I just "get out" all of my personal information from Google?

Mostly yes. http://www.dataliberation.org/

gizmomagico3• 16 years ago

And Google won't be keeping a copy of anything you export or "move" out, right?

I'm not terribly interested in a chance to "get out" my data from services that will keep my data anyway.

They also did give Facebook my GMail contacts, which I thought was scuzzy, but hey that's alright as long as I can export stuff out from various Google services!

stanleydrew7• 16 years ago

Your rant makes no sense to me. You seem to be complaining that Google has erected a confirmation page making it marginally harder to get your contact info out and then at the end complain that it was too easy before when Google let Facebook snatch it all?

gizmomagico3• 16 years ago

Google has been giving up people's contact information (without their consent) from GMail to Facebook for a long time.

It's safe to assume Google has been getting something in return all along, but now something's changed, and they decided to make a big fuss about the whole thing.

Then they say things like:

a site that doesn’t allow you to re-export your data to other services, essentially locking up your contact data about your friends.

Locking up? --> "Open" vs "Closed" again.

So once you import your data there, you won’t be able to get it out.

I bet that most people would think of "getting something out" as removing it. They make it sound like you should be able to remove "your data" from Facebook..

you are always free to download your contacts using the export feature in Google Contacts

.. As if Google letting you export things from various Google services amounted to the same thing, which it doesn't. No matter how much you export your data, Google will still be keeping a copy of everything, so talking about "getting it out" is disingenuous.

Because, after all, you should have control over your data.

Why did Google give "my data" to Facebook without asking me, or even notifying me about it then? After several years of handing people's contact information over to FB behind the scenes, why is it suddenly important that I have control over my data? Disingenuous.

But this is all just a PR-stunt and an attack against Facebook combined. Open vs Closed again, and Google parading around as a champion of Openness and your rights, when in the end, both parties are just corporations and only interested in making money off of you and "your" data.

kwamenum86• 16 years ago

I am not sure if the back and forth between Google and Facebook is intriguing or just childish at this point.

Neither is doing this for the users. They are doing it to help their services grow and ultimately to help their bottom line grow. Believing anything else would be naive at this point.

prima-facie• 16 years ago

A big middle finger to FB.

janulrich• 16 years ago

It's great how they used check boxes to make the submit button appear. It makes it more likely that people will actually read the warning.

gabrielmazzotti• 16 years ago

jajajaja Gmail rules!

oemera• 16 years ago

This is a really clever move from Google and I think many people will read this and stop giving there data to Facebook. I have a dump feeling about giving all of my data to Facebook cause they have sure enough. Otherwise: it's free and they are making money with your data right?

jasonkester6• 16 years ago

As luck would have it, I picked today to set up a Facebook profile for me girlfriend. I'm now really angry with Google.

It used to be a 30 second task to sift through your address book and check off people to send friend requests to. Now, thanks to Google behaving like children, I need to figure out how to export her contacts as a text file so that I can upload it to Facebook.

Google, please stop.

You are pissing off your customers.

Edit: subsititure Users for Customers in the previous sentence if it helps you to parse it. The end result is still the same: The people who use Google's service are being punished by Google for the actions of a 3rd party.

gazrogers• 16 years ago

Customers? How much money have you paid Google for services this year?

jasonkester6• 16 years ago

A few grand, give or take. Why does that change anything?

Edit: Google charges for things like AdWords, of which I am a heavy user. So yes, people do in fact pay them money for things.

cookiecaper3• 16 years ago

This argument is such an annoying fallacy. People who use Google's services are Google's "customers" in the same way people who watch television are the network's "customers". You may not be the direct source of income, but if they lose all the "non-customers" that are using their services, they're going to lose all of their advertisers, which is their direct source of income. The audience is a crucial component in a business model that depends on advertisement.

Even if it wasn't, Google opens itself to criticism and review whether their service is free or not. We definitely shouldn't temper our ideas or give Google a pass because "it's free"; that might excuse some advanced features, but it definitely doesn't extend into basics like contact exporting. That's a fundamental, and something that many have blasted Facebook, also ostensibly a "free" service, for not supporting well.

Google is making money off of Gmail. If they weren't making money off of Gmail, they would have discontinued the service a long time ago. Even if the nominal costs exceed the direct profits gained from Google Apps licenses and the display of AdWords, etc., which I tend to doubt, the indirect benefits are obviously valuable.

Should we all feel a great gratitude to the for-profit corporation Google for pursuing their best interest? Certainly we all appreciate the free services, but Google is no charity and expecting an altruistic, anything-goes attitude to their products is silly. They are a serious company making serious money and competing in a serious space, there's no need to make up excuses for them, especially naive ones like, "Well it's free anyway so you shouldn't expect anything out of it".

lwhi• 16 years ago

We - the customers - pay google with our attention. The transaction isn't as cut and dried as it is when money changes hands, and we don't have so much recourse to complain (and get an adequate response) but I do think we are definitely customers.

Nothing is truly 'free'.

Negation of this fact, provides companies who offer their services for 'free' with an excuse to treat their users badly.

moultano2• 16 years ago

Can't you just click "proceed" when you get to this page?

jasonkester6• 16 years ago

You don't get that page. You just get their standard oauth page, followed by an empty list when you get back to Facebook.

hardik• 16 years ago

As opposed to Facebook simply not allowing you to export your contacts?

What if you would have picked today (or rather any other day) to set up a new gmail account for your girlfriend and needed her facebook contacts?

rabidsnail• 16 years ago

You can get the contacts for a facebook user through the graph api (including email, if you request the appropriate permission). This is what you get a list of when you request someone's friend list: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user .

ephoz2• 16 years ago

Is Google really behaving like a child, or warning its users against childish actions? Facebook is not a dreamworld, so I'm quite happy when some people are reminded that they're submitting their friends addresses to a service that will never forget about them.

jasonkester6• 16 years ago

Call it what you like. They're effectively punishing their own users because they don't like a 3rd party service.

Those users, however, clearly do like that 3rd party service, and would just like to get on with setting up their account there.

Any action at all by Google during that process (other than the expected one) just makes things worse for their users. The adult thing to do, then, is to simply not do anything to make matters worse.

luckyland2• 16 years ago

"As luck would have it, I picked today to set up a Facebook profile for me girlfriend."

I can't be the only one who thinks this is more than a bit weird.

nollidge• 16 years ago

Presumably it was with her permission?

amitvjtimub• 16 years ago

As a prospective customer why don't you get mad at Facebook?

sets13• 16 years ago

At the end of the day it was not google who is making this choice but Facebook. There is still a functioning API that would allow Facebook to continue allowing users to import their contacts. The problem is that they are no longer in compliance with the usage terms of this API. If it is such a problem for the customer all Facebook needs to do is move into compliance with the usage terms of this API (by allowing users to export their data from facebook) and then they can begin using the API again. All in all I agree with Google's modification to the API usage license and really think that the ball is in Facebook's court.

sp4rki• 16 years ago

Why aren't you mad at Facebook for not allowing the export feature which is causing this trouble? You could easily say the same thing in reverse: The people that use Facebook's services are being punished by Facebook because they don't want to open their data (as they already do with Yahoo and Hotmail). You want to know the reality of most people? When they end up at that page coming from Facebook, they'll get mad at Facebook not Google. Another reality is also the fact that most people that use both services rely on Google and are more likely to leave Facebook, than to leave Google if it came down to it.

Users in Facebook are more volatile. While Facebook is a lot more 'addictive', with time the lack of value it actually provides becomes apparent and it becomes two things for most people: an open-id provider and a distraction hub. Google offers actual value to their customers and therefore commands a sense of loyalty that Facebook doesn't get because of main issue in this fight. Opening the data Facebook collects to fair use of their customers is a big step in providing value, Facebook is just afraid that this integration might fuel competition. How very Microsoft right?

sssparkkk• 16 years ago

Maybe google is trying to get facebook to open up now, so it'll be in time for everyone to be able to use it to migrate to Google Me.

portman5• 16 years ago

Le sigh.

I think Google has lost sight of something very simple in this fracas:

With Google Contacts, the user directly manages his contacts' email addresses.

With Facebook, the user delegates management of email address to his contacts.

These are not the same thing. The Google contacts team seems to think that Facebook is an address book just like them. They are not. And to me, that failure to understand the differences is the root source of all this tomfoolery.

Edit after some very welcome discussion downstream:

On GMail, my contacts' email addresses are MY data.

On Facebook, my contacts' email addresses are NOT my data. The FACT that I am connected to my contacts is my data, but any information about those contacts does not belong to me.

This is why Facebook is not an address book, and pretending it as an address book where "your data gets stuck" is bound to lead to frustration for everyone.

akozak• 16 years ago

I don't think the difference is very important. I've almost never manually added a contact into Google and my contacts list has been built up by years of correspondence. In a sense, the people I've been emailing determine which address shows up in my contacts list.

In any case, even if there is a big difference, you haven't really said why the debate hinges on a failure to understand it.

blahedo• 16 years ago

No, you don't understand the distinction portman is making. It's not between "type in email myself" vs "harvest from email", i.e. a question of data entry. It's a question of management. With Google Contacts, I'm the one that updates an email address if someone else's address changes. With Facebook, all I manage is the list of contacts, while the contact manages their own email address. Which means that when someone changes their email address, I don't need to either know or care. And crucially, if someone I email infrequently changes their email, there's no danger that I "miss the window" and lose the contact entirely.

That's a pretty big difference.

armandososa• 16 years ago

And juste because I delegated management of contacts to Facebook, are they excused for not letting me get my data out whenever I want to switch contact management services -- for example -- to diaspora?

cookiecaper3• 16 years ago

Facebook allows you to do this now. Go to Account->Account Settings->Download your Information.

portman5• 16 years ago

That's not what I said.

With Facebook, you delegate authority to manage email address to YOUR CONTACTS (not Facebook).

In Google or any other address book, I can go into my friend Ted's contact and change his email address if I want to.

In Facebook, I can't change Ted's email address. Only Ted can change it.

To me, this is a MAJOR distinction.

portman5• 16 years ago

Again, this hinges on the meaning "my data".

From your statement, I am guessing you believe that the email addresses of your contacts is your data.

So here's the thought experiment:

Amy uses GMail and has been corresponding with Bill, who works at Acme. Bill's email address, bill@acme.com, is in Amy's GMail address book. "bill@acme.com" is now a piece of data that is, unquestionably, "owned" by Amy.

Amy joins Facebook, uses the GMail importer to detect if any of her GMail contacts are also on Facebook, and sees that Bill is on Facebook. She asks to be Bill's friend, and he accepts.

Several months later, Bill gets a new job. He now works for The Nonprofit Foundation, and his new email address is bill@nonprofit.org. Bill logs into his Facebook account and updates his email address.

Because Amy uses Facebook and is friends with Bill, she can see his new email address.

Is the piece of data "bill@nonprofit.org" now "owned" by Amy?

Personally, I think it's a complex question. I don't automatically ascribe ownership of "bill@nonprofit.org" to Amy, and it's hard for me to say that she has a right to export that email address out of Facebook. Others may disagree. But I would hope we ALL can agree that the above scenario is not black and white, and that we can have a reasoned discussion about data ownership.

davidu• 16 years ago

Except that you can export the email addresses if you use Hotmail or Yahoo! Contacts, which have special agreements with Facebook.

I did this, and even though it's super crappy because it doesn't map to my existing address book entries very well, at least I finally have my FB friends' email addresses.

krschultz• 16 years ago

From the other direction, I use one email address for public facing stuff and one for actual emails. So for me the email address Facebook has is actually worthless to me and the email address other people have for me in their Gmail accounts is hugely valuable to me.

Honestly I could care less if the email address used for Facebook is publicly posted and I get spammed from every penis enlargement pill salesmen on the planet, I never read it.

When my actual Gmail address gets passed to Facebook by someone who joined and imported their contact list, and then they email me, I find it to be far more of an invasion of privacy.

random42• 16 years ago

On GMail, my contacts' email addresses are MY data.

I do not agree to it.

niels_olson• 16 years ago

should I, as your physician, release all my contacts data to Facebook? Do you suppose everyone with HIV wants a huge number of people to know that an infectious disease specialist in HIV is one of her contacts?

luckyland2• 16 years ago

But does it work with Orkut?

scrrr• 16 years ago

Interesting how the tide seems to turn. My Conspiracy theory:

I think Facebook might have gone to far with Facebook Deals. Now Groupon, its friends and other bystanders start to react less kindly to Facebook's business model: Copying ideas from other websites with nothing in return. Oh, well.

sdrinf• 16 years ago

Are there any publicly traded betting pool for this? I've got 10 bucks saying FB will open up their data silos (at least for Google) within the next 12 months :)

chrischen6• 16 years ago

Google should also point out that if Facebook lets you export your friends' emails then your friends can do the same to your email. And that if that happens one bad or compromised friend can give yours and everyone else's emails to spammers.

Same thing can happen with Google Contacts, but the difference is that on Contacts you give out your email. On Facebook you signup with an email and then you "friend" someone.

phjohnst2• 16 years ago

There is a point that hasn't yet been mentioned here about the fundamental difference between an address book, and Facebook.

Facebook is okay to be a dead-end for contacts' emails, since the email upload is used once to find others on the service. After that, if you need to contact someone else on Facebook, you can do so with a wall post or an inbox message. The email address is irrelevant.

With an address book, you need it to be portable, since the medium is accessible from many different locations and services.

The fact is that you dont need to get your friends' contact details out of Facebook. You sign up for Facebook to make Friends on Facebook and communicate over Facebook. Not to communicate over email, etc. (And certainly not over a rival network.) When you add someone to your address book, you do so to communicate with them over email, or phone, or whatever, which are inherently completely open and interconnected systems. [Surely there is a debate to be had here about the ubiquity of Facebook as a platform and that it should be open - could you imagine Facebook Clients? But I dont believe that's a debate about exporting existing contact info.]

To that end, Google warning users about the terminal nature of their exported data is unnecessary and only confuses the process of finding friends for users (who, by the way, aren't thinking about data portability, or building up an address book/contacts list on Facebook, they're thinking about making Friends on Facebook, to communicate over Facebook)

TL;DR: This whole mess doesn't matter, and Google is only making things complicated for users.

brianpan• 16 years ago

You don't need to use the email upload once either. That's the point. Google's making it clear that you getting something from them "for free" and you won't be able to go back in the future.

Tyr42• 16 years ago

>The email address is irrelevant. I disagree. My usage pattern is to use facebook to find a person, then get their email and contact them through email, since I check my email more frequently than I do my facebook. (which is almost never, since I have it send me anything important by email.)

phjohnst2• 16 years ago

Sure. But then Facebook doesnt really have a reason to care about you, as a non-user of their service, and keeping data locked in is their best way of keeping you coming back.

zoowar• 16 years ago

Ironically, control of personal data ends once the data has been shared, by you or any of your friends. Terms of Service often enable a company to collect and share your data as they see fit.

ajaimk• 16 years ago

Alternate heading: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

kmavm2• 16 years ago

Here's what Google had to say about social networks and email exporting less than one year ago:

"Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks — when a user friends someone they don’t then expect that person to be easily able to send that contact information to a third party along with hundreds of other addresses with just one click."

The occasion was Google disabling exporting of contacts from Orkut to Facebook. I happen to think that both Google then, and Facebook now, are perfectly correct. However, I am curious how those who see Google as clearly in the right, and Facebook as clearly in the wrong, would reconcile Google's statement and actions of a year ago with its statements and actions of the last several days.

Edit: citation http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/orkut-slows-hemorraging-to-...

kyledreger• 16 years ago

I want a page to see the total number of "complaints" Google has collected so far. Just curious as to how many people actually picked that option.

itsnotvalid• 16 years ago

Apparently, it's just for Facebook only.

https://www.google.com/mail/help/contacts_export_confirm.htm...

By the link of this, one can see that only exporting to Facebook would render this confirmation message.

Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

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