In an age of high technology, smart-phones and mobile tablet computing, transferability of data from one machine to another is extremely important for many reasons, the most important of them being convenience. Google, in an insulted tantrum and need to let its discontent and disappointment be known throughout the Internet, recently announced that it will turn off its popular email client’s data feed to social media websites like Facebook.
Contacts stored in Google’s Gmail will no longer be automatically transferred to others unless the site that requests access provides reciprocal data. Analysts speculate Google’s decision to turn off Gmail’s data feed is directly related to a deal struck between Facebook and Microsoft that allows user data to power the Bing search engine, Google’s competitor. Facebook, with 500 million users and growing, has been extremely selective in forging business relationships and has yet to strike a deal with Google, the largest search engine in the United States and quite possibly, the world, over data sharing.
Unreachable for comment, Facebook responded to Google’s decision to block the export of contact information from Gmail by providing their users a two-step solution by adding a link that allows users to first move Gmail contacts to a computer and then in step two the contacts are uploaded to Facebook. Surrendering to defeat, Google replied that "[a]s passionate believers that people should be able to control the data they create, we will continue to allow our users to export their Google contacts."
Could Google finally have come to the realization that it just may no longer be “the next best thing?”
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