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Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

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Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#81

Post by kmavm »

ck2 wrote: post #48

I approve a warning 1000% - it's not like they are stopping you from exporting. This will slow down my AOL-using friends who gave away all their contact info to Facebook and now I get pelted with spam from Facebook using my name and list of friends (and I don't even have a Facebook account). Google has never spammed me or share my name and location, Facebook does it all the time, pick who's more evil.

> This will slow down my AOL-using friends who gave away all their contact info to Facebook and now I get pelted with spam ...

Right; there are practical usability problems with allowing willy-nilly access to your contact list. Some of your contacts have now given your email address to a company with which you never wanted to have a relationship.

Which is precisely Facebook's reasoning for not providing an API to download your friends' email addresses. Thanks for providing a concrete reminder of the legitimacy of this choice.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#82

Post by dedward »

jasonkester wrote: post #72
ck2 wrote: post #48

I approve a warning 1000% - it's not like they are stopping you from exporting. This will slow down my AOL-using friends who gave away all their contact info to Facebook and now I get pelted with spam from Facebook using my name and list of friends (and I don't even have a Facebook account). Google has never spammed me or share my name and location, Facebook does it all the time, pick who's more evil.

Actually, it is like they stop you from exporting. Here's the message I get when I try to import my contacts into Faceboook: Google did not return any of your contacts. You can still find your friends on Facebook by uploading a file of your Gmail contacts below. ... followed by instructions on how to download my gmail contacts to a file and re-upload them. So it seems that Google's implementation of their "whining at…

You can export them just fine - they just aren't allowing a 3rd party site to automatically import them - they're making you consciously do it yourself.

To someone who can do it either way, this may just seem like an annoyance, but a great many people won't grasp the severity of what they are about to do by handing their credentials for gmail over to facebook.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#83

Post by jasonkester »

ephoz wrote: post #74
jasonkester wrote: post #63

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…

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.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#84

Post by netaddict »

reledi wrote: post #34
paraschopra wrote: post #26

"Select one or more options. Cancel and go back" I liked this. So Godfatheresque!

The other options are the check boxes. New buttons will appear when checked.

The check boxes aren't even visible in my chrome. http://imgur.com/qMpND

I don't know if this is a bug.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#85

Post by akozak »

portman wrote: post #75

Le sigh. I think Google has lost sight of something very simple in this fracas: With Google Contacts, the user directly manages his contacts' email addresses . With Facebook, the user delegates management of email address to his contacts . These are not the same thing. The Google contacts team seems to think that Facebook is an address book just like them . They are not. And to me, that failure to understand the diff…

I don't think the difference is very important. I've almost never manually added a contact into Google and my contacts list has been built up by years of correspondence. In a sense, the people I've been emailing determine which address shows up in my contacts list.

In any case, even if there is a big difference, you haven't really said why the debate hinges on a failure to understand it.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#86

Post by luckyland »

jasonkester wrote: post #63

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…

"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.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#88

Post by abrahamsen »

jasonkester wrote: post #72
ck2 wrote: post #48

I approve a warning 1000% - it's not like they are stopping you from exporting. This will slow down my AOL-using friends who gave away all their contact info to Facebook and now I get pelted with spam from Facebook using my name and list of friends (and I don't even have a Facebook account). Google has never spammed me or share my name and location, Facebook does it all the time, pick who's more evil.

Actually, it is like they stop you from exporting. Here's the message I get when I try to import my contacts into Faceboook: Google did not return any of your contacts. You can still find your friends on Facebook by uploading a file of your Gmail contacts below. ... followed by instructions on how to download my gmail contacts to a file and re-upload them. So it seems that Google's implementation of their "whining at…

Clicking on the link to the "trap" page and checking "Proceed with exporting this data" brings up a "Download my contact information" button. Clicking that gives me a csv file with all my Google contact information.

So I can certainly export my Google contact data. I don't have a Facebook account, so I don't know whether it can import it. But the data is there, in an easy to parse format.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#89

Post by jasonkester »

dedward wrote: post #82
jasonkester wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is like they stop you from exporting. Here's the message I get when I try to import my contacts into Faceboook: Google did not return any of your contacts. You can still find your friends on Facebook by uploading a file of your Gmail contacts below. ... followed by instructions on how to download my gmail contacts to a file and re-upload them. So it seems that Google's implementation of their "whining at…

You can export them just fine - they just aren't allowing a 3rd party site to automatically import them - they're making you consciously do it yourself. To someone who can do it either way, this may just seem like an annoyance, but a great many people won't grasp the severity of what they are about to do by handing their credentials for gmail over to facebook.

Exactly. One week ago, you could seamlessly import them into Facebook.

  - That's a big step back.
  - It makes things worse for their users.
  - There is no positive effect from the change.
  - They did it on purpose.
We're all here because we build web apps for a living. And none of us would ever consider doing something like that with one of our own sites. I have no idea why anybody at Google thought that this was a good idea.

Re: Gmail: Trap my contacts now (warning when exporting contacts to Facebook)

#90

Post by blahedo »

akozak wrote: post #85
portman wrote: post #75

Le sigh. I think Google has lost sight of something very simple in this fracas: With Google Contacts, the user directly manages his contacts' email addresses . With Facebook, the user delegates management of email address to his contacts . These are not the same thing. The Google contacts team seems to think that Facebook is an address book just like them . They are not. And to me, that failure to understand the diff…

I don't think the difference is very important. I've almost never manually added a contact into Google and my contacts list has been built up by years of correspondence. In a sense, the people I've been emailing determine which address shows up in my contacts list. In any case, even if there is a big difference, you haven't really said why the debate hinges on a failure to understand it.

No, you don't understand the distinction portman is making. It's not between "type in email myself" vs "harvest from email", i.e. a question of data entry. It's a question of management. With Google Contacts, I'm the one that updates an email address if someone else's address changes. With Facebook, all I manage is the list of contacts, while the contact manages their own email address. Which means that when someone changes their email address, I don't need to either know or care. And crucially, if someone I email infrequently changes their email, there's no danger that I "miss the window" and lose the contact entirely.

That's a pretty big difference.

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