> [A specific company I won't call out explicitly] sucked contacts out of Gmail but refused to export contacts back out. I'm guessing everybody read [A specifi

> [A specific company I won't call out explicitly] sucked contacts out of Gmail but refused to export contacts back out. I'm guessing everybody read [A specific company] as "Facebook", but I know for sure of at least one other company, and possibly two, that it could refer to :-) In fact, now that I think about it, I can think of several candidates. But let's talk about reciprocity. Who owns your contacts? You, or Google? If you want to export contacts out of Google's services, why should Google stop you just because the other service does not reciprocate? Sure, Google makes it easier than most, but isn't that also what their users wanted? If the user truly wants the other service to also export contacts as easily, that's between the user and that other service. Now consider that Gmail is in the top 3 biggest email providers next to Yahoo and Hotmail/Live/Outlook/Whatever-it's-called now. Very likely it is now the biggest, and so they have the biggest set of contacts data in the world. If any 3rd party service wants access to those contacts, Google wields a disproportionate amount of power over them, and as this post shows, is willing to apply it by "requiring reciprocity". "Level Playing Field" indeed.