Google Warns Facebook Users of "Trap" Before Exporting Data

If you hadn't yet heard, there's been a bit of a scuffle this past week over your data by two Internet giants - Facebook and Google. It started when Google began blocking other services from importing its data without reciprocity, a move aimed directly at Facebook. Since then, the ball has been back and forth, with Facebook making a run around Google and deep-linking directly to a contact exporter on Google.

Now, Google has retaliated by asking any user that gets that far if you are "super sure you want to import your contact information for your friends into a service that won't let you get it out?" 

This is the page that Facebook users now see when they try to export their Google data to find their friends on Facebook. "You have been directed to this page from a site that doesn't allow you to re-export your data to other services, essentially locking up your contact data about your friends," warns Google. "So once you import your data there, you won't be able to get it out." The page even offers users the ability to "register a complaint"!

This is just the latest move in a week-long skirmish between the two companies.For now, it looks like the ball is now in Facebook's court, as Google has tried to take the moral high ground by continuing to allow the export of users' data. That is, of course, with a bit of a "don't say I didn't warn you" before they click the button.