The war began: Facebook banned Google Friend Connect

Facebook announced today in its blog that they closed Google Friend Connect’s access to the Facebook API.

Let's start with the chronology of product launches:
MySpace on May 8 announced its Data Availability project, then Facebook Connect was born on May 9, and was the last to report on its Google Friend Connect product. And all three projects are similar as twins, they all use the same terminology: openness and portability, openness and portability of data, even the description of services is almost the same. We will not focus on a particularly suspicious nuance - the identity of the names of Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect products.

After Google launched Friend Connect, we had the opportunity to evaluate their technology. We found that Google receives information about Facebook users without respecting the confidentiality terms, which violates our Developer Terms of Service . And as a concern for our users, who may not understand what is happening, we were forced to suspend access to Facebook information for Google users, until the situation is brought into line with the standards

They claim that they turned to Google several times on “this issue,” but nowhere does it indicate which conversations, if any, took place. It also does not specify how exactly Google Friend Connect violates the terms of service. All this is opaque and gives no explanation.
Although…. It all looks like a detective story, and it’s easy to translate it with a simple translation, but the bottom line is that Facebook changed the text in the Developer Terms of Service (see TechCrunch for details).
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However, the last paragraph of the blog also states that they want to work with everyone:

We think MySpace Data Availability, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect can be part of a huge driving force for the development of the entire industry so that our users can better and safer share their experiences online, but respecting user privacy

Chris Kelly (Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook)

The question is that Facebook users, after porting data to Google Friend Connect, have no control over them.

David Glazer (Director of Engineering for Google's data portability project)

Once synchronization with a Facebook account is received, data exchange is allowed, and also through the control panel on Facebook, users can independently set and change settings, including reject applications for porting, then all questions to the Facebook API. We were in “constant contact” with Facebook, and we are still trying to establish a working dialogue in order to get access to the API again. But Facebook has its own vision, and not in a hurry to pay off this conflict. Google takes perfectly adequate measures to protect user privacy with its Google Friend Connect. Facebook, in turn, controls the API, and they are able to add new features to solve this problem, but they do nothing, boosting the environment, expecting to get something more

The screenshot shows that Google allows you to “Disable” specific social networks from the IngridMichaelson website (on the right) or change information about what is in common with the social network (on the left).



Google, MySpace, Yahoo! and Facebook have huge ambitions in this game, and everyone wants to control a piece of cake called social networks. MySpace and Facebook have their own “clean” social networks, but we must understand and remember that the data can also come from Email and IM services.

When Google announced the launch of Friend Connect, Google did not offer MySpace partnerships, despite the fact that the two companies are partners in the Open Social project. Instead, Google announced that third-party developers will be able to access data from Orkut, hi5 and Facebook. Apparently, Google wanted to understand how open Facebook really is for collaboration.

It is interesting to see the competition in the data portability space. What seemed like a fantasy only a year ago is now an inexorable trend: the data will be free on all social networks. Or, as Charlene Li said, “social networks will be like air.”

via The Social Trend