“You can’t take it with you” may no longer apply to personal data picked up by the two newest participants in DataPortability.org

ReadWriteWeb called it a bombshell, but we’re seeing a little puff of smoke and not much noise with the announcement from DataPortability.org.

Google and Facebook, along with Plaxo, will have employees participating in the working group to develop data portability standards. As Marshall Kirkpatrick said:

The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era of Data Portability – where users can take their data from the websites they use to reuse elsewhere and where vendors can leverage safe cross-site data exchange for a whole new level of innovation. Good bye customer lock-in, hello to new privacy challenges. If things go right, today could be a very important day in the history of the internet.

Call us skeptical, but Facebook and Google have nothing to gain by opening their data for portability. We see the announcement as more of a “keep your enemies closer” move, but look forward to being proven wrong.