16 May 2008

Google and Facebook - battling for friends to connect

Google Friend Connect has hit a stumbling block only three days after its release - Facebook has banned the application.

On Friday 9th May Facebook announced their "Facebook Connect" initative which allows third party sites to implement features of Facebook. On the following Monday Google announced Google Friend Connect, a similar application that can access multiple social networks through the OpenSocial developer community.

Just three days after Google's announcment, Facebook have revealed that Google Friend Connect has been banned from using the Facebook Platform in its current form. Facebook have intimated that the reason for this is that Google Friend Connect breaks the Facebook terms of service by passing user information to third parties without the user's knowledge.

"In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we've had a chance to evaluate the technology. We've found that it 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. 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."

As one of the most popular and active social networks, the loss of Facebook to Google Friend Connect will be a significant blow to the number of prospective users. For now we are left to wonder and wait for a response from Google. Coming hot on the heels of rumours that the search giant is suffering a brain drain as Google loses big names to Facebook it seems that the two have plenty to scrap about at the moment. But will Facebook's ban be nothing more than an easily remedied bump in the road, or does it signify a more serious trend?

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