Facebook Changes Set Google Employees to Deactivate Accounts
Who cares what a bunch of Google people do online? Apparently a lot of folks. The brown stuff is flying all over Tech Crunch and Search Engine Land over the past couple of days. Matt Cutts and a bunch of other Google employees have quite publicly deactivated their Facebook accounts because of the new social grid efforts unveiled at F8. (See Facebook: Gotta Like It from 4/22/10.)
What the Google folks are alluding to is the idea that Facebook will now share your data with several different "partner" sites, such as Docs.com, a Microsoft site like Google Docs; Pandora, a music sharing site; and Yelp, a reviews site is appalling. (This is kind of funny in the wake of Google Buzz's personal data fiasco not so very long ago.)
What happens when you arrive at one of these "partner" sites? You see an iframe border at the top of the page that says, "Hi [your name here]. [Site name here] is using 
to personalize your experience. Learn More – No Thanks." It's easy to opt out, but why you'd want to isn't clear to me.
The Google folks are apparently voting with their feet over this.
Or are they?
I mean, Facebook publicly announced that they had the desire to be the new "sheriff" online, and we all know who the 800-pound gorilla is on the Net now, right? Is this really a privacy issue or a dominance issue? Amazing… Websites can't urinate.
What's the big deal? People are getting upset because my friends visit Pandora and see what music I've clicked the "like" button for. Whoopee. If I don't want people to know that I'm a closet Rob Zombie fan, I can say, "No thanks," right?
You can also go directly to Facebook and opt out of the personalization here:
http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy§ion=applications&field=instant_personalization
However, Facebook reminds you when you do:
"Please keep in mind that if you opt out, your friends may still share public Facebook information about you to personalize their experience on these partner sites unless you block the application. Learn more."
This is what's pissing people off. Yet, when you follow the "learn more" link, Facebook also tells you, "Social plugins are engineered in such a way that no personal information is shared with websites using them."
So, what's the big deal? I'm guessing it's not so much about the privacy schtick, but about Facebook competition that Google just can't hang with. What say you?
