In a recent launch of Google’s (GOOG) Friend Connect, Facebook has banned Google’s access temporarily until Google complies to Facebook’s specifications of sharing private data.
It’s hard to tell whether Facebook will ban Google completely but I think they are really trying to protect their own privacy policies at this point.
The day that Facebook goes public, I am buying shares though.
The fact is that Google is taking perfectly adequate steps to protect user privacy with their Friend Connect product, and it is a useful product for users. After talking with both sides, it seems to me that Facebook is relying on a very convenient catch-22 to stay out of Google’s network. They are the ones in control of their own API functionality, and they could add features that fix this problem. Until they do, there’s nothing Google can do to remedy the “problem,” and the walls around the Facebook garden get ever higher.
