The tension within privacy and control reached a high-water mark in the social-networking world last week as Facebook and Google traded barbs about which company is more protective of user privacy.

On Thursday, Facebook fired a shot across the bow when it blocked Google’s new Friend Connect service, which allows Web sites to deploy composition from social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

Friend Connect “redistributes user info 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,” Facebook developer Charlie Cheever wrote on a corporate blog.

Zuckerberg Wants To Talk

“Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute input in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user info until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about

that issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their documents precisely when and where they choose,” Cheever wrote.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a more conciliatory tone at a news conference in Tokyo during the weekend. “We want to talk to Google about that and see whether there’s a way we can prepare it work,” he said. He reiterated concerns that Google can’t be trusted with the details.

“Part of the issue with Google’s Friend Connect is that when users grant access to Google’s product, Google might share their knowledge with another application, or some part of it, perhaps not all of it, without that user knowing,” Zuckerberg said. “And part of what makes our system work is that folks know precisely who they are sharing all their data with.”

A New Pirate in the Valley

So that is all about privacy? Joe…

Orginal post by Top Tech News