Google’s contacts API allows developers to access users’ Gmail contact lists and some other data. However, Google has recently changed its terms of service so that developers who use that data will now also have to make the data they have available to Google.

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The move will affect all developers who use the API, but it’s being seen as directed at Facebook. GigaOm writes that there are two ways to view the move: as “an attempt to impose Google’s vision of how the Internet should operate on helpless little companies and competitors like Facebook” or as “an attempt to force openness on companies who might otherwise want to keep your data locked down within a walled garden (this is clearly the view that Google itself has, not surprisingly).”View article