Google Unveils Delicious Bookmark Importer
Google has just rolled out a convenient new tool for importing your Delicious bookmarks to Google Bookmarks. — The simple importer takes your Delicious login credentials (or lets you use a one-click OAuth button) and imports all your bookmarks, preserving labels or tags.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google and del.icio.us have been circling each other for years — a third-party deliGoo mashup was already bridging the two back in September 2007, and by January 2008 Delicious results were being integrated into Yahoo search after Yahoo acquired the service. In March 2010 Google added its own collaborative twist with shared bookmarking lists, giving Google Bookmarks a social layer of its own.
The importer lands in the same week Google is leaning hard on social signals: an analyst argues its Social Search feature is primarily aimed at blocking Facebook and Twitter from search results, and that Google now gives prominence to links from users' own networks. A tool that pulls tagged, labeled bookmarks out of a rival platform feeds exactly that pipeline.
First-order effects
- Delicious users gain a credential- or OAuth-based one-click path to move their full bookmark libraries into Google Bookmarks with tags preserved — lowering the switching cost on Yahoo's flagship social property.
Second-order effects
- Yahoo-owned Delicious faces pressure to respond with its own portability features or lock-in mechanics, since the marginal cost for a user to defect just dropped to near zero.
- Imported tags give Google structured user-curated link data to weight inside Social Search, sharpening the social-results push analysts read as a countermove against Facebook and Twitter.
Third-order effects
- User-generated curation data — bookmarks, tags, lists — becomes a contested asset that platforms court across service boundaries rather than treat as proprietary, making data portability a standing competitive weapon in the social layer of search.
The trend: Bookmarking is shifting from siloed services toward portable user data that large platforms like Google recruit wholesale to feed their social search ambitions.