The tension between privacy and control reached a high-water mark in the social-networking world last week as Facebook and Google traded barbs about which company is more protective of user privacy.
On Thursday, Facebook fired a shot across the bow when it blocked Google’s new Friend Connect service, which allows Web sites to deploy content from social networks like Facebook and MySpace.
Friend Connect “redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our terms of service,” Facebook developer Charlie Cheever wrote on a corporate blog.
“Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose,” Cheever wrote.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a more conciliatory tone at a news conference in Tokyo during the weekend. “We want to talk to Google about this and see if there’s a way we can make it work,” he said. He reiterated concerns that Google can’t be trusted with the data.
“Part of the issue with Google’s Friend Connect is that when users grant access to Google’s product, Google might share their information with another application, or some part of it, maybe not all of it, without that user knowing,” Zuckerberg said. “And part of what makes our system work is that people know exactly who they are sharing all their information with.”
So this is all about privacy? Joe…