[gizmomagico]

This is such bullshit.

A service that won't let me "get my contact information out"? Nice way to frame this in terms of "openness" too, apparently riding "open" for all it's worth with Android is not enough.

Can I just "get out" all of my personal information from Google? No? Isn't Google "open" enough to let me do it?

We think this is an important thing for you to know before you import your data there.

Did you also think it was super duper important with a cherry and smarmy bullshit on top to let me know before you gave Facebook my GMail contacts behind the scenes when I was registering there earlier this year?

No, and I was disgusted when Facebook started suggesting them for "friends" right away.

[moultano]

>Can I just "get out" all of my personal information from Google?

Mostly yes. http://www.dataliberation.org/

[gizmomagico]

And Google won't be keeping a copy of anything you export or "move" out, right?

I'm not terribly interested in a chance to "get out" my data from services that will keep my data anyway.

They also did give Facebook my GMail contacts, which I thought was scuzzy, but hey that's alright as long as I can export stuff out from various Google services!

[stanleydrew]

Your rant makes no sense to me. You seem to be complaining that Google has erected a confirmation page making it marginally harder to get your contact info out and then at the end complain that it was too easy before when Google let Facebook snatch it all?

[gizmomagico]

Google has been giving up people's contact information (without their consent) from GMail to Facebook for a long time.

It's safe to assume Google has been getting something in return all along, but now something's changed, and they decided to make a big fuss about the whole thing.

Then they say things like:

a site that doesn’t allow you to re-export your data to other services, essentially locking up your contact data about your friends.

Locking up? --> "Open" vs "Closed" again.

So once you import your data there, you won’t be able to get it out.

I bet that most people would think of "getting something out" as removing it. They make it sound like you should be able to remove "your data" from Facebook..

you are always free to download your contacts using the export feature in Google Contacts

.. As if Google letting you export things from various Google services amounted to the same thing, which it doesn't. No matter how much you export your data, Google will still be keeping a copy of everything, so talking about "getting it out" is disingenuous.

Because, after all, you should have control over your data.

Why did Google give "my data" to Facebook without asking me, or even notifying me about it then? After several years of handing people's contact information over to FB behind the scenes, why is it suddenly important that I have control over my data? Disingenuous.

But this is all just a PR-stunt and an attack against Facebook combined. Open vs Closed again, and Google parading around as a champion of Openness and your rights, when in the end, both parties are just corporations and only interested in making money off of you and "your" data.