Our post earlier tonight about Google shutting down Facebook’s access to Gmail data exports makes me think two things. First, I’m not sure there’s much data that Facebook doesn’t already have with it’s 600 million users (although 1.3 billion people visit Google sites a week, so they’re not exactly slumming). And second, the data protectionist era has now begun in earnest.

Trade restrictions, tariffs, etc., called protectionism, is always a double edged sword. It has the short term benefit of helping domestic companies stay competitive and profitable, and that also protects jobs. On the downside the consumer is hit with higher prices on whatever industry is being protection. And protected industries tend to lag behind competitively, so when/if the restrictions are lifted they are in a very bad situation.

But here’s the very worst part of protectionism. If you start it, you can expect the other side to start it to. That’s when you get what’s called a trade war, and lots of potential economic gain evaporates.

I’m seeing all the signs of a “data war” beginning now. It’s not among nations, though. The players are the big Internet companies who have lots of user data today, and want more (all of it) tomorrow.

For a long while the webmail companies have generally been lenient about exporting user data via an API to other applications. It’s what the user wants, and most everyone is reciprocal. Or, they’re too small to matter yet. This is a “free data trade” type situation with the best economic consequences.

Well, everyone but Facebook. They’ve just pretty much refused to let users export social graph data, even though they import it like crazy from every source they can get their hands on.

This is a game theory situation. One party isn’t playing ball, but’s reaping the benefits of open data policies by all it’s big competitors. That forces competitors to protect their data as well (Google’s done it in a surgical way to avoid fallout with other non-Facebook companies). But once this ball starts rolling, and it has, it’s pretty hard to stop it.

Expect it to get worse from here.

Ultimately that’s very bad for the companies involved, but it’s also bad for consumers who now have fewer choices with what to do with their…err..Google’s data. In other words, we all lose.

• When Wrong, Call Yourself Prescient Instead
• Why Facebook Still Doesn’t Have An iPad App

Today at its mobile event, Facebook executives Mark Zuckerberg and Erick Tseng gave some (vague) answers as to why there still isn’t an official iPad application.

Zuckerberg was pretty blunt when it came to explaining why there wasn’t an iPad launch during today’s mobile event: “The iPad isn’t mobile”. He later qualified this statement to say that Facebook loves working with Apple, but that the iPad isn’t as mobile as a phone (he’s right).

Tseng stepped in to add that the rise of tablets isn’t going to be about the iPad alone — we’re going to soon see numerous additional devices running on Android and possibly other platforms. And given Facebook’s limited resources, it doesn’t really make sense to hone in on a single platform.

Facebook needs a solution that will let it deploy features across multiple devices quickly, so there isn’t a lag time like there has been between the Android and iPhone apps. In other words, we’re going to see a web-based mobile application that’s going to be targeted specifically at the tablet form factor.

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Well would you look at that. Earlier today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs went on a bit of a tirade against Google and Android in particular. And you know that couldn’t have made Android chief Andy Rubin too happy. But how was he going to respond? Well, he decided to awaken his dormant Twitter account and send his first tweet tonight. And sure enough, it’s clearly (but subtly) in response to Jobs.

Without further ado, here is Andy Rubin’s first tweet:

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

For those keeping score at home, that’s Rubin using some geeked-out lingo to explain exactly what open is to Steve Jobs. In other words: Android.

Well played.

Rubin has about 100 followers right now. That should skyrocket shortly.

Welcome to Twitter, Andy! I wouldn’t expect a response from Jobs, as he doesn’t use the service. But maybe Apple SVP Scott Forstall will respond instead (he has yet to tweet and still only follows Conan)?

Earlier, I didn’t have a way to verify for certain if it was Rubin or not, so I had some qualified words just in case it wasn’t. I’ve since confirmed with a couple of people in the know that it is in fact him, so I’ve updated the wording.

[thanks Jon]

• NSFW: Give me ad-free conversations, or give me death (please RT)
• Dr. TweetLove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the @Ev Bomb

In 1997 Wired Magazine declared the browser dead. “Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still have postcards and telegrams, don’t we?” said Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf.

They were wrong, of course. The browser is still the killer app of killer apps. It’s the single most important way that we interact with the Internet. From Wikipedia to webmail to YouTube, it’s the universal virtual machine that has made pc operating systems irrelevant. If all you have is a browser, you’ll be just fine.

Fast forward to today and Wired is once again saying the browser is dead. “Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display,” says Chris Anderson.

And about that 1997 article: They weren’t wrong, they were prescient. “The point was altogether prescient,” Anderson says now of that article. Overheard on the TechCrunch Yammer stream: “Possibly the greatest explanation for being dead fucking wrong that I’ve ever seen.”

Wired is still wrong. Way wrong.

The new article is based on a foundation of data supplied by Cisco that shows web traffic, as taking a smaller piece of total Internet traffic. The chart itself is misleading, as BoingBoing pointed out. But even taken at face value, it’s still wrong.

Wired’s argument, based on the data, is that the browser is dead and apps, like iPhone apps, are taking over. “This is not a trivial distinction. Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display.”

Um, ok. But the data doesn’t show this at all. Sure, video traffic is expanding. Which makes sense because it’s a heavy load. But most of it is also being transported via Flash and HTML right through a web browser. And most app data is counted under “web” in Wired’s graph, meaning its all lumped together with normal browser data.

In other words, Wired took a misleading graph and then drew all kinds of conclusions based on it that don’t even make sense in their make believe world. It’s like they showed a picture of a banana and said it explains the rising cost of gasoline.

In fact, the only thing Wired’s chart really shows is that video files are really big, and people like to watch them in browsers.

The browser isn’t dead. Web pages aren’t dead. HTML works really, really well. Check out Facebook’s iPad “app,” for example. You don’t download it from an app store, you just point your browser to touch.facebook.com. Not only does it work really well, Steve Jobs doesn’t get to have a veto right over people using it. It’s no wonder that we’re seeing a surge of traffic from the iPad to our site, via a browser.

Apps are great on mobile phones with small screens. But they are a pain to install and keep synchronized. Eventually having less local software will make sense on phones, too. All you really need is that browser virtual machine and you can pull everything else from the cloud. This is obvious. Only a bunch of hipster tech journalists checking email on their iPads all day* would think otherwise, and then make up a bunch of data to support their argument.

*Wired, not us.

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