I am indeed talking about the millions of users who have stored contacts with Google.
The hundreds of application developers have absolutely no right to access that contact information.
It is the users who have the freedom to give other applications permission to access their data, and it is that freedom that Google is taking away.
To me this means that Google doesn't respect its users rights to do what they want to do with their data.
What if Microsoft prevented users from their loading word documents into Google Apps because they disliked some of Google's policies?
If Google really believes that the data belongs to their users, then they would let their users decide what to do with it, even if the users want to give it to a company that Google finds threatening.
The hundreds of application developers have absolutely no right to access that contact information.
It is the users who have the freedom to give other applications permission to access their data, and it is that freedom that Google is taking away.
To me this means that Google doesn't respect its users rights to do what they want to do with their data.
What if Microsoft prevented users from their loading word documents into Google Apps because they disliked some of Google's policies?
If Google really believes that the data belongs to their users, then they would let their users decide what to do with it, even if the users want to give it to a company that Google finds threatening.