Facebook and Google: True Social Networking Friends

From News.com:

A post Thursday on Facebook’s developer blog explains that the social network has suspended participation in Google’s “Friend Connect” project, citing a violation of its internal terms of service.

“Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology,” the post by Facebook employee Charlie Cheever read. “We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.”

Now come on. You’re telling me Facebook agreed to be part of something before understanding the architecture and flow charts of how data would be used?

REALLY?

No, not really. Later down in the piece a Facebook employee claims Facebook was really never involved in the first place:

According to (Facebook Chief Privacy Officer) Kelly, the social network never actually had a formal partnership with Google in Friend Connect, which allows owners of Web sites to add social features using the existing APIs from sites like Hi5, Plaxo, and Facebook. “There wasn’t participation to start with. That was sort of a mis-impression that may have been formed by their release,” he said. “We weren’t briefed on how the Friend Connect product was going to work.”

Sounds like a spat between pretend friends on Facebook….But….It’s not clear to me that Facebook was ever part of Friend Connect. In any case, it’s interesting to grok the design choices by Google, love that Facebook blue they’ve got going: