Nov 5, 2010 10:30 GMT  ·  By

Google has fired the first salvo in what is poised to become a war between web giants, Google and Facebook, over data they don't actually own. The company has made a small update to its API Terms of Service which effectively states that any service trying to import Google contact data via its API will have to offer the same functionality in return.

What it means is that services that don't offer a contact export API will be blocked. The ToS, of course, should apply to any web service out there, but the real target is only one, Facebook, since the social network doesn't offer a way for its users to export contact data. Google will only be enforcing the ToS on a case-by-case basis.

"By accessing Content through the Contacts Data API or Portable Contacts API for use in your service or application, you are agreeing to enable your users to export their contacts data to other services or applications of their choice in a way that’s substantially as fast and easy as exporting such data from Google Contacts, subject to applicable laws," they key part of the Google API Terms of Service reads at 5.8.

The social component of the web has always been important, but with the rise of Facebook it's become crucial. Key to any social website is the contact data, the relationships between its users and universal ways of identifying them.

It's easy to see why this is valuable and, so far, most big players enabled users to export and import this data as well as provided APIs for others to easily access it.

That is, until Facebook came along. Facebook has never allowed its users to export their data, via any means. Very recently, Facebook has opened up some of its data, enabling users to export their posts, photos and so on.

Facebook even enables users to export a list of their friends' names, but, crucially, still doesn't provide actual contact data, email addresses, phone numbers and so on.

Since the social network should be closing in on 600 million users and social connections are the core of the site, it's safe to assume that Facebook has the world's largest and most comprehensive contact data. And it's keeping it all to itself.

Google, understandably, would want to be able to access that data, if only because it's intensifying its own social web efforts. Gmail data is already quite significant, but access to Facebook's would be a huge bonus.

It would be best for everyone, except Facebook, of course, if the world's largest social network would be more open. But the site has very little incentive to open up access at this point.

It's already huge and it has already benefited from the data Google, Yahoo and Microsoft offered. It also has other means of getting to that data, regardless whether Google restricts API access or not.

And, while Google's move is justifiable, it doesn't really help users, except maybe in the long run. For now, it just makes data less accessible. Of course, users can export all Google data manually, but won't be able to import it automatically from Facebook.

In the end, users are the worse off in all of this. Facebook will only be minimally inconvenienced, Google takes a small press hit for becoming less open, but it's the users that will bear the grunt of the decision, especially if the battle intensifies, as it is very likely.

"Google is committed to making it easy for users to get their data into and out of Google products. That is why we have a data liberation engineering team dedicated to building import and export tools for users," Google responded in a statement.

"We are not alone. Many other sites allow users to import and export their information, including contacts, quickly and easily. But sites that do not, such as Facebook, leave users in a data dead end," Google continued.

"So we have decided to change our approach slightly to reflect the fact that users often aren’t aware that once they have imported their contacts into sites like Facebook they are effectively trapped," it explained.

"Google users will still be free to export their contacts from our products to their computers in an open, machine-readable format–and once they have done that they can then import those contacts into any service they choose. However, we will no longer allow websites to automate the import of users’ Google Contacts (via our API) unless they allow similar export to other sites," it added.