Google blocks data from Facebook as competition heats up

Google Inc. has decided to begin blocking Facebook and other Web services from accessing its

user’s information, highlighting an ever growing rivalry between the two internet giants.

Google made a subtle change to the guidelines that govern how external services can let their

users import contacts from Google. Now those services will have to allow their users to export

data in a manner similar to how Google handles data export, meaning Facebook will have to

change its policy if it wants to allow more users to morph Gmail contacts with Facebook friends.

However, as Mathew Ingram notes at GigaOm, now that Facebook has 500 million users the

policy change is a bit late to really force Facebook into having to make any meaningful changes.

All it means is that Facebook users won’t be able to automatically use their Gmail contacts

to populate their Facebook friends list, but they’ll still be able to use contacts from Yahoo or

Microsoft’s services, as well as just find contacts by searching on Facebook.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20021949-265.html

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