Google Looking for a Little Give and Take from Facebook

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, Google (News - Alert) promises to websites trying to access Gmail user data. As long as other social networking sites are willing to share user data, Google is will to provide access to its user data. Facebook (News - Alert), however, not following Google’s code of reciprocity, has been given limited access to Gmail user data. Those newly registered to the popular social networking site no long have the ability to tap into their Gmail contacts in order to expand upon their network of friends.

Google did not hide it disdain for Facebook’s lack of courtesy, singling them out in an announcement about the policy change being implemented over the next few weeks. “We have decided to change our approach slightly to reflect the fact that users often aren’t aware that once they have imported their contacts into sites like Facebook, they are effectively trapped,” said company officials.

Like many other web firms, Google lets other sites access data it holds on users of its many services via an Application Programming Interface (API). Before the policy switch, sites used Google's API to allow their users automatically to import GMail contacts so they could rapidly fill out their profile and find others using the service.

Now Google will only give automatic access to GMail contact data to those sites and services allowing their data to be mined and shared.

Gartner (News - Alert) analyst, Ray Valdes, told Reuters that he believes Google's decision and policy change is tied to its business ambitions. Google looking to become a bigger player in the social networking world, has some catching up to do after Microsoft (News - Alert) and Facebook signed a deal, which integrated information from the social network into Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.

Perhaps Google is nearing an announcement date for their own social network, possibly the only industry in which they do not have a well-known presence.