Google Warns Facebook Users of "Trap" Before Data Export

If you hadn’t yet heard, there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle this past week over your data by two Internet giants – Facebook and Google. It started when Google began blocking other services from importing its data without reciprocity, a move aimed directly at Facebook. Since then, the ball has been hit back and forth, with Facebook making an end-run around Google and deep-linking directly to a contact exporter on Google.

Now, Google has retaliated by asking any user that gets that far if you are "super sure you want to import your contact information for your friends into a service that won’t let you get it out?" Take a look at Google’s rather hilarious response after the jump.

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This is the page that Facebook users now see when they try to export their Google data to find their friends on Facebook. “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,” warns Google. “So once you import your data there, you won’t be able to get it out.” The page even offers users the ability to “register a complaint”, although it’s unclear where this complaint will end up.

This is just the latest move in a week-long skirmish between the two companies. If you want to fully catch up on the whole affair, you can read up on Techmeme. For now, it looks like the ball is now in Facebook’s court, as Google has tried to take the moral high ground by continuing to allow the export of users’ data. That is, of course, with a bit of a "don’t say I didn’t warn you" before they click the button.

Here is the full text of Google’s warning:

Hold on a second. Are you super sure you want to import your contact information for your friends into a service that won’t let you get it out?

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. So once you import your data there, you won’t be able to get it out. We think this is an important thing for you to know before you import your data there. Although we strongly disagree with this data protectionism, the choice is yours. Because, after all, you should have control over your data.

Of course, you are always free to download your contacts using the export feature in Google Contacts.

This public service announcement is brought to you on behalf of your friends in Google Contacts.

[__] Register a complaint over data protectionism. (Google will not record or display your name or email address.)

[__] Proceed with exporting this data. I recognize that once it’s been imported to another service, that service may not allow me to export it back out.

Select one or more options. Cancel and go back

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