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Facebook Removes Google Contact Import from "Find Your Friends"

By mike, Nov 22 in blog with 0 comments

Facebook versus Google… but what round are we on now? It’s a little salvo this time, but Facebook has removed all mention of Google’s Gmail service from its "Find your Friends" feature. It’s just one more of the squabbles between Google and Facebook that all began when the former blocked access to the latter’s ability to find new Facebook friends via Gmail itself.

Why’s that? Google was irked that Facebook allowed users to find new friends based on one’s contact listing within a Gmail account, but Facebook itself didn’t allow the procedure to go in reverse. By that, we mean that there’s no way to populate your Google Contacts listing with any information that’s found in Facebook.

In response, Google denied Facebook the ability to pull in information from Google Contacts. Facebook successfully investigated a workaround. Google responded by posting a large missive for those trying to use Facebook’s workaround to import Google information.

"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," read a message on Google’s Gmail page.

"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."

Well, it appears that the squabbling between the two—at least, over the issue of contact importing—is set to die down. Facebook has since removed Gmail as an eligible candidate within its "Find Your Friends" feature, which means that users will be unable to access Gmail contacts—workaround or otherwise—via Facebook.

Attempting to do via Facebook’s "Other email service" link within Find your Friends brings up an error message for any who try to use a standard Gmail address: "Everyone on this contact list is already on Facebook or has already been invited."

According to TechCrunch, Facebook has also removed any kind of Gmail importing functionality from its Friendfeed site as well.

Story by David Murphy www.pcmag.com

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.