[maggit]

To me it embodies their "don't be evil" company motto. I think Facebook is being evil here, and Google is fighting the good cause.

However, I can see your angle as well. It seems that the world is not black and white after all :(

[atourino]

That Facebook is evil or not is irrelevant, I think. (I happen to think that their interests and the privacy interests of their users are not aligned at all). Google is fighting the good cause, ok, I agree. But the method they used in this instance is not the best. They could've simply said: "Hey look man. Facebook wants us to give them your contact data. These are the possible consequences: 1., 2., 3. Are you sure?" Their current wording implies (to me) that a user's data is all going to be imported and kept inside of FB and nowhere else (which is a key point), which is not true as Google holds the user's data as well. There will be divergence afterwards as the user begins to use Google and FB in different ways. But yeah, I do see that FB is not an easy place to get your data out of, but Google is using users' data as a pressure point to force FB's hand. What would be interesting to find out is if they are defending privacy because it's a noble thing to do, or if they are just defending privacy because it happens to benefit them in some other way.

edit: added "and nowhere else (which is a key point)"