Comment by jasonkester
16 years ago
As luck would have it, I picked today to set up a Facebook profile for me girlfriend. I'm now really angry with Google.
It used to be a 30 second task to sift through your address book and check off people to send friend requests to. Now, thanks to Google behaving like children, I need to figure out how to export her contacts as a text file so that I can upload it to Facebook.
Google, please stop.
You are pissing off your customers.
Edit: subsititure Users for Customers in the previous sentence if it helps you to parse it. The end result is still the same: The people who use Google's service are being punished by Google for the actions of a 3rd party.
As opposed to Facebook simply not allowing you to export your contacts?
What if you would have picked today (or rather any other day) to set up a new gmail account for your girlfriend and needed her facebook contacts?
You can get the contacts for a facebook user through the graph api (including email, if you request the appropriate permission). This is what you get a list of when you request someone's friend list: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user .
Interesting, your list of contact data doesn't actually include any contact information, which is the crux of the argument.
Is Google really behaving like a child, or warning its users against childish actions? Facebook is not a dreamworld, so I'm quite happy when some people are reminded that they're submitting their friends addresses to a service that will never forget about them.
Call it what you like. They're effectively punishing their own users because they don't like a 3rd party service.
Those users, however, clearly do like that 3rd party service, and would just like to get on with setting up their account there.
Any action at all by Google during that process (other than the expected one) just makes things worse for their users. The adult thing to do, then, is to simply not do anything to make matters worse.
I'm not a big Facebook-fan, so I don't feel punished /at all/ when Google antagonizes the service... More like the opposite actually. That's just my opinion and I won't push for it more than this ; it's okay if we disagree. :)
I guess, if enough users would complain to Google or feel the need to leave their awesome free services for a more Facebook-friendly vendor, good for them. It's not like there's no choice since you can you know... export your data.
I think that they are preventing long term problems with their business model and at the same time, in my humble opinion, preventing long term societal problems. Expressed in greater detail here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891167
Why aren't you mad at Facebook for not allowing the export feature which is causing this trouble? You could easily say the same thing in reverse: The people that use Facebook's services are being punished by Facebook because they don't want to open their data (as they already do with Yahoo and Hotmail). You want to know the reality of most people? When they end up at that page coming from Facebook, they'll get mad at Facebook not Google. Another reality is also the fact that most people that use both services rely on Google and are more likely to leave Facebook, than to leave Google if it came down to it.
Users in Facebook are more volatile. While Facebook is a lot more 'addictive', with time the lack of value it actually provides becomes apparent and it becomes two things for most people: an open-id provider and a distraction hub. Google offers actual value to their customers and therefore commands a sense of loyalty that Facebook doesn't get because of main issue in this fight. Opening the data Facebook collects to fair use of their customers is a big step in providing value, Facebook is just afraid that this integration might fuel competition. How very Microsoft right?
Customers? How much money have you paid Google for services this year?
This argument is such an annoying fallacy. People who use Google's services are Google's "customers" in the same way people who watch television are the network's "customers". You may not be the direct source of income, but if they lose all the "non-customers" that are using their services, they're going to lose all of their advertisers, which is their direct source of income. The audience is a crucial component in a business model that depends on advertisement.
Even if it wasn't, Google opens itself to criticism and review whether their service is free or not. We definitely shouldn't temper our ideas or give Google a pass because "it's free"; that might excuse some advanced features, but it definitely doesn't extend into basics like contact exporting. That's a fundamental, and something that many have blasted Facebook, also ostensibly a "free" service, for not supporting well.
Google is making money off of Gmail. If they weren't making money off of Gmail, they would have discontinued the service a long time ago. Even if the nominal costs exceed the direct profits gained from Google Apps licenses and the display of AdWords, etc., which I tend to doubt, the indirect benefits are obviously valuable.
Should we all feel a great gratitude to the for-profit corporation Google for pursuing their best interest? Certainly we all appreciate the free services, but Google is no charity and expecting an altruistic, anything-goes attitude to their products is silly. They are a serious company making serious money and competing in a serious space, there's no need to make up excuses for them, especially naive ones like, "Well it's free anyway so you shouldn't expect anything out of it".
Hmmm, no. They are a valuable audience, but they are not customers. A customer is someone who pays you for a service. That is the definition.
Why do TV networks continue interrupt their "customers" with ads even though their "customers" don't want ads? That's because their "customers" are not their customers. Their customers are the people paying for those ads and they get to interrupt the "customers" with ads.
It's very important to recognize distinction the between users (aka "customers") and customers if you want your company to survive. "Customers" are the product you sell.
A few grand, give or take. Why does that change anything?
Edit: Google charges for things like AdWords, of which I am a heavy user. So yes, people do in fact pay them money for things.
Cut the snark. We all know you haven't paid a few grand for gmail this year.
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We - the customers - pay google with our attention. The transaction isn't as cut and dried as it is when money changes hands, and we don't have so much recourse to complain (and get an adequate response) but I do think we are definitely customers.
Nothing is truly 'free'.
Negation of this fact, provides companies who offer their services for 'free' with an excuse to treat their users badly.
"As luck would have it, I picked today to set up a Facebook profile for me girlfriend."
I can't be the only one who thinks this is more than a bit weird.
Presumably it was with her permission?
I think he was more commenting on the computer illiteracy.
Perhaps this is an older gentleman? The only people I can imagine being unable to set-up a Facebook account comfortably are 50+. And even then, I know for a fact a lot of them can.
As a prospective customer why don't you get mad at Facebook?
At the end of the day it was not google who is making this choice but Facebook. There is still a functioning API that would allow Facebook to continue allowing users to import their contacts. The problem is that they are no longer in compliance with the usage terms of this API. If it is such a problem for the customer all Facebook needs to do is move into compliance with the usage terms of this API (by allowing users to export their data from facebook) and then they can begin using the API again. All in all I agree with Google's modification to the API usage license and really think that the ball is in Facebook's court.
Can't you just click "proceed" when you get to this page?
You don't get that page. You just get their standard oauth page, followed by an empty list when you get back to Facebook.