This is a static method which should be protected like the static data(Element, key, value).
So to be coherent we should change the visibility or remove it, I opted to remove it so as we dont maintain this in the api.
It is not used anywhere in gquery nor gquery-plugins though. 

IMO, the normal way to use the data() is via the instance method $(element).data, but I have just taken a look to jquery api and they maintain both ways, instance [1] and static [2] , so we could re-add this method and make the other public as well, or leave this until we face to have all jquery static methods in gquery. WDYT?


[1] http://api.jquery.com/data/
[2] http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.data/