Google - Always The Scraper, Never The Scrapee

The recent Robert Scoble/Facebook Kerfuffle was widely reported by Kara Swisher of the WSJ and by Nick Carr of RoughType. The flap had to do with the ability of a Facebook user to synchronize his contact data with the Plaxo contact manager.

For this "crime," Scoble was banned from Facebook (and then reinstated later after much wailing and gnashing of teeth). This is all the more interesting because Facebook welcomes with open arms a one-way import of contact data from gmail and Outlook. As I wrote on my Keeneview Blog, the result is that Facebook is becoming the roach motel of social networks.

Facebook is simply following the gameplan laid out by Google - always be the scraper, never be the scraper. Google - which owes its $200B+ market cap to its ability to scrape information from other web sites - goes to great lengths to avoid being scraped.

There are numerous reports of Google's equivalent to the Microsoft blue screen of death for example, for example here and here. More importantly, Google has permanently banned IP addresses from Web 2.0 sites like dapper and openkapow (full disclosure, I am on the board of Kapow).

Thus Google, the poster child of all things Web 2.0, makes it impossible for third parties to build mashups that take advantage of Google functionality. Doesn't that seem awfully Web 1.0 of them?

The Machiavellian lesson of Web 2.0 is clear - always be the scraper, never be the scraper.