14 DAY TRIAL // Google seems to be picking fights with all of its big competitors these days. A couple of weeks ago, Bing came under fire for 'stealing' search results, now Facebook is taken to task over data portability issues, something the two companies have fought over before.
The latest Android update for the flagship Nexus S packs a small, albeit probably unpleasant, surprise, it disables Facebook contacts sync, effectively removing all the Facebook "phone directory" data from the Contacts app.
This comes only a few months after the whole Gmail contacts import issue, in which Google started blocking direct data sync requests from Facebook. It also added a warning page for those attempting to download contacts data manually for the social network.
Google's issue is with the fact that Facebook doesn't allow third-parties to pull contact data, except in some hand-picked exceptions. Google is not one of those exceptions.
Now it's taking a somewhat similar stance with mobile contacts. Currently, Android users can choose to sync their Facebook contacts with their phones.
This will display contact data - phone numbers, email addresses and so on - of their Facebook friends among the regular phone contacts.
But Nexus S users who install the latest update and had the feature enabled will notice that all the Facebook data is gone.
Google says it has done this because the data wasn't trully synced, it wasn't stored along with the regular contacts, just pulled from the cloud and cached locally.
"For Nexus S users who downloaded the Facebook app from Android Market, Facebook contacts will no longer appear to be integrated with the Android Contacts app. Since Facebook contacts cannot be exported from the device, the appearance of integration created a false sense of data portability," Google explained.
"Like all developers on Android, Facebook is free to use the Android contacts API to truly integrate contacts on the device, which would allow users to have more control over their data," it added.
The interesting part is that, according to Google's own Terms of Service, developers have to use the official Contacts API for sync. In Facebook's case, Google made an exception which, it says, it's now rectifying.
The data is still available in the Facebook app, but not in the phone's contacts. This change only affects those that have downloaded the Facebook app from the Market and it will also apply to future "lead" devices.
The move will probably not affect that many people and for those that it does, it won't be such a huge hassle. But it's yet another move that hurts users more than it does either Facebook or Google.
Perhaps it will pay off in the long run, with Facebook becoming more open about its data, though that's unlikely. On the other hand, there is little incentive for Facebook to open up and Google's pressure can only help.