Google CEO — Take Your Data and Run

BobB writes to tell us that Google is promising to make the data they store for end users more portable and is urging other companies to do the same. From the article: "Making it simple for users to walk away from a Google service with which they are unhappy keeps the company honest and on its toes, and Google competitors should embrace this data portability principle, Eric Schmidt said at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco."

taken

i'll take this post and run

Kudos to them

I didn't RTFA but the concept sounds quite tantalizing. Good for them.

Obvious first steps..?

IMAP for Gmail, where Tags become Folders dynamically. Send as Emailed DOC/XLS/ODW/ODS for Google Docs

Evolution hooks into Gmail would be sweet!

see subject.

Re:Evolution hooks into Gmail would be sweet!

Already does ... gmail has a POP3 server, so you can just download into Evolution (unless you want the actual GMail GUI in Evolution, which seems rather bizarre since the Evolution interface is already pretty "sweet").

Difficult for more complex data?

It's applaudable that Google is doing this, although not at all surprising. But most of the user data they store is pretty simple (spreadsheets, e-mails, etc.), so making it portable is relatively easy. This is far more difficult to do for real business data, like hosted CRM solutions (e.g. Salesforce). Google also doesn't have much to lose by making their data portable ... almost all their services are free, vs. Salesforce which has the potential to lose millions per year on some of their larger customes.

Re:Difficult for more complex data?

just because a service is given away for free does not mean it's not profitable. google has a lot to loose if people stop using their services...

Re:Difficult for more complex data?

Google also doesn't have much to lose by making their data portable ... almost all their services are free, vs. Salesforce which has the potential to lose millions per year on some of their larger customes.

They don't stand as much to lose from any one customer leaving, but they face as much of a problem as anyone else if the same percentage of their customers choose to leave. What Google is gambling is that, if they have a good product, the reduction in the disincentive to give it a whirl that comes from people knowing up front that if they decide to leave, it will be painless will gain them more customers than easing out migration will lose them. And also that someone that has a good experience leaving one Google service may be more likely to try another Google service.

for the "omg you google fanboys" people

next time you post some nonsense about how "all the slashdot people idolize google for some reason," this would be a good example of why we like them.

Re:for the "omg you google fanboys" people

I certainly like Google but that's bullshit. Eric is tactful with his words; surely all of this data portability stuff has an additional purpose, like, say, helping bringing valuable data in to Google's services? MS Office is the incumbent here, so of course Google wants to make it easy to transfer data between MS Office and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, for example.

Not saying it's a bad thing, not saying Google isn't a great company, but I wouldn't take any claims made by x about how great x is at face value.

Wonder if they were thinking of Flickr.

Actually, when I read this, I think it's aimed at Flickr.

Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa Web Albums are basically similar services. Flickr is a much bigger and more mature service, but Google's has more features and offers more control -- in particular, it implements some features that folks on Flickr have been begging for, literally for years in some cases.

(For example, Web Albums lets you upload photos to an "unlisted" album, which you can then send out special invitation emails out from; only people with the special URL in the email can access the photos. Flickr provides no such method of control; either your photos are public and open to the world, or they're open only to specific Flickr members you designate as 'friends' or 'family.' Basically, if you want to share photos only with your family, Flickr wants you to sign them all up for Yahoo IDs and Flickr memberships. Yeah, right.)

But once you have a few hundred photos up on Flickr, it's difficult to migrate off of. If you have them all carefully organized in iPhoto or something, then maybe you can do it, but if you've uploaded a few photos from here, a few from there, scattered across a dozen computers or emailed from mobile phones, there's no easy way to extract everything and migrate it to a different service. You're basically stuck with Yahoo, and the longer you stay with them, the more photos you upload ... you can see where it goes. (Although, maybe there's some way you could come up with a shell script that would parse Flickr's URLs and download the full-resolution photos, and file them according to photosets and other information.)

If the data was more easily transferable, then people could migrate from one service to the next. As adoption of Google's Web Albums is hobbled directly by the difficulty of moving off of Flickr, I saw this as one possible interpretation of the article's meaning.

Re:Wonder if they were thinking of Flickr.

maybe there's some way you could come up with a shell script that would parse Flickr's URLs and download the full-resolution photos

"Maybe"?

Flickr is one of the most open and programmable sites out there. Check out http://www.flickr.com/services/api/ [flickr.com] -- absolutely everything you can do at Flickr, you can do programatically.

There are thousands of third party utilities that operate over Flickr photos, including many that will download all your photos along with all the metadata. There's even a perl module for it, Net::Flickr::Backup.

Google's Image

Just another thing google is trying to do to impove its image, they always wanted to look like the good big corp, and its working, (i think)

Better yet..

I like this idea as a backup strategy, so that you can copy the "image" once a week so that you will NEVER lose your data.

This is a big gamble...

...and it's going to pay off.

The technological aspect pales in comparison to the message that "The biggest reason to use us is that you don't have to," and its corollary, "People who use our services do so because they want to, not because we have them locked in."

Go on, take the money and run

doot doot doot

API for Contacts?

How about an API so I can access my Contacts?

Can someone send this article to Palm? I'm sick of having to export my Palm contacts as vcards and import them into Yahoo (Yes Yahoo - Gmail only accepts csv).

Moo

John Doe Vs Mr. Google Man:

Judge: John Doe, what is your claim against the defendant?

John Doe: Mr Google Man said my data would be portable. When i asked him where my data was, he said "search me".

Judge: Mr. Google Man, did you indeed say "search me".

Mr. Google Man: Yes sir, i did.

Judge: And why? Did you not have the data in a portable fashion?

Mr. Google Man: Yes, i did. When i said "search me", i mean to go to the google home page, and search for it.

Judge: And why should he search for it?

Mr. Google Man: The new privatedata.google.com (beta) has easy access to everyone's private information, and he could access it more easily there than anywhere else.

Judge: Do you mean to say that people's private data, for example, mine, is easily availabe?

Mr. Google Man: Yes sir. The Google Man can!

John Doe: I thought the it was the Candy Man that can, er could, can could, yes could.

Judge: The Candy Man was arrested a few years ago for inappropriate relations with a child.

Mr. Google Man: John Doe is the Candy Man.

Judge: Is he now?

Mr. Google Man: Yes sir. A simple search on gimmethegoodsonmyneighbor.google.com (beta) will show that during the investigation most blogs thought he was him.

Judge: Blogs??

Mr. Google Man: You're honor, i move that we drop this case. Jusst like you dropped marijuana right before you came on the bench.

Judge: Strike that from the record!

Judge: Motion to Dismiss accepted. John Doe will pay the court costs.

Border Crossings

I wonder if business people will start to put some of their data in this system before crossing the border into, or out of, the US. Sure, it won't replace the laptop they confiscated from you, but at least you'll still have your data. Who knows, maybe someone at the conference/work site you're going to has an extra PC that you could use. Just a thought.

But will they follow through with it?

Lets slow down for a second and ask ourselves
who is going to encourage everyone else to get on the data portability bandwagon?"

Well, whoever stands to gain the most from having users which can come and go as they please. I should acknowledge that I realize this kind of portability would be beneficial to both Google and web users in general. However, I don't see this going over so well with the likes of Yahoo and Hotmail (I don't want to pay an annual fee to prevent my account from being deleted or deactivated, dagnabit!). One could make a fairly good argument that google has some of the best-in-class services on the web, and they know it.

It will be interesting to see if/how they follow through on this. I would be much more comfortable using some of their services if I knew I could do an XML or equivalent type data dump and leave if I felt the need.

- Wi-Fizzle Research [wi-fizzle.com]

Can't be the only one

I can't be the only person on here that thought that Google's CEO was going to run off with our data or something from the title...

Kudos

Kudos again to Google for taking the practical customer oriented approach, and trying to allay the fears of the tinfoil hat crowd. It won't, but Kudos for trying.

a message to Eric

Google - if you are so bold, let's see you provide IMAP [wikipedia.org] access to gmail.

Overheard in Redmond

What is this concept of letting customers^Wconsumers switch from your product?

Clarification

To clarify: Google does not consider the search histories of its users to be part of what they call "data" they are talking about, so they will not send you your entire search history and erase their copy if you tell them you want to move all your data to another place.

Now if only..

I could take my data and run TO google. I love their gmail hosted for domains, but when I can't import mail it's a bit of a pain in the ass... Yes I know I can use cheesy programs to transfer to gmail, but I like being able to sort by date.

from hosted apps to hosted OS

I think Google should provide a Linux box with root access to each surfer.

The most basic web based interface would be a AJAX based command line over https, so you can login as root.

A more sophisticated one would be using a GUI-ish web application.

Finally, when you are at your computer and not in an airport public terminal or internet cafe, you can use special purpose client software for remote desktop access.

All your gmail's attachments, docs, or spreadsheet you edit would end up on your computer, and could be edited with remote desktop software too.

If they want they can add ads in the desktop. Nor does it matter to me if they charge for the service. In the latter case the model could be as in Amazon's EC2, a few cents for CPU hour, GB transmitted/stored. If the computer is iddle it is hibernated and stored, and you are not charged for it.

And if you want to leave you can download your image or have a DVD mailed to you.

Great, now if only they would let me **delete** it

Making a user's application data portable is nice. I'd much rather be able to take the secret data that Google has amassed on me away and toss it in the bin. Google doesn't just know everything you've searched for, they know what you click on and every site with google ads that you've visited. Plus they read your gmail and all the data from their on-line apps and keep that information forever.

Give the users some real power. Let them decide how Google uses their data.

PS,
Yes, I do know that many SD readers use proxies and delete cookies and such but this does not make my point any less significant for most users. I'm not in the camp that thinks that users should have to be programers to have any privacy rights.

Conspiracy theory

Of course this is a great thing for us, the consumers. I just think of why Google would do this beyond it naturally sounding like a positive thing. Google has little to lose now as one post mentioned and their information is easy to share. Other companies may follow this trend because we, the consumer, expect to easily migrate data from one provider to the next and this is when Google can really tae advantage. As Google grows, buys more companies, and expands product offerings it seems it would be convenient if they could capture new customers easily because they suggested that industries move towards an easily transferable structure. Google, being the new comer to each service they begin to provide would stand to gain the most form this policy. Conspiracy theory complete.

But will Google let it go?

Will Google delete my emails? My documents? My search history? No, no and no. That's where their money come from. Targetted advertising based on invading my privacy.

Exit Strategy

This sounds like something I have been talking to my clients about for years.

They should see if people they are thinking of doing business with have provided an exit strategy for them should things not work out. A company/person that put you first would be happy to do so.

So many only want to provide an entrance strategy. They want to get you easily into their world and then lock your hip in.

all the best,

drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
Sayings
A NaNoWriMo novel in the making (copyleft type license)

"your data"?

I thought that google laid claim to everything stored on their resources?

is this just pretend "your data", or so I actually own my own stuff when stored on google filesystems?

Isn't this one of MS's Pillars of Monopoly?

Isn't the closed Office file formats one of the things that keeps Office totally and completely locked into the worldwide corporation? I'm really thinking more of .xls than .doc, but they're both barely compatible between different machines to say nothing of different office suites or even types of application. Methinks this is another Google strike against Microsoft ...

And on a more general note: data portability barely works WITHIN companies - to say nothing of making an effort to allowing customers to manipulate the data sold to them.

how about a way to get data INTO google?

I was invited to the GMail For Domains beta, but was unable to participate because, just like with the main GMail service, there's no way to get your existing mail INTO it other than just forwarding all your messages one at a time to gmail ... and doing that means you lose all your date information.

Re:Great, now if only they would let me **delete**

Basic concept of privacy: objects can't violate it, only people can. Does your blender invade your privacy? Do your walls? Security cameras don't violate privacy unless they're being used by a person to watch you--your rights can only be infringed upon by a person or corporate entity (a person under the law). Mechanical processes don't qualify for person status and therefore by definition can't violate privacy.

"As long as the data exists it can be demanded by the government through National Security Letters and by corporations and individuals in lawsuits, including divorce suits. So, yes, the very existence of this data pool is a privacy risk."

First of all, I said "as long as it's just a computer observing the data" so this comment is a non sequitur. That aside, the risk of something does not a violation make. The existence of guns constitutes a risk to human life. The use of combustion engines represents a safety risk. The very existence of cameras could be a privacy risk. None of these things are illegal--they're restricted. Likewise, there are restrictions on data collection and standards for its security. Again, the existence of such data is no problem; it's merely the management of it that poses a threat.

The rhetorical question "why should people be more wary of Google" was meant to call into question the so-called 'privacy battle' with web data collection in comparison to other forms of data collection which have existed for decades and not gone away. Essentially what I'm trying to say is, how is this different from security cameras and credit cards and ISP logging?

being able to take the data has more value...

there's much more to making the data portable then giving people the freedom to leave, it's just another reason to sign up in my opinion...

All Fluff and no substance

For instance where is the link (or the navigation instructions) on where to download a tarball of all my gmail account? Or anything else?

Lots of talk in this article, no actual info. Im sure its 'coming soon'.

Re:Wonder if they were thinking of Flickr.

There's even a perl module for it, Net::Flickr::Backup.

Yeah, I don't know why my mom couldn't find that.

~jeff

Re:Difficult for more complex data?

FYI...you can get your emails, and contacts I think, by firing up good ol' Outlook (or Outlook Express) and configuring it for your hotmail account. Connect to your account, then export or save as or whatever. Although, I'm not sure if there is a non-Winbloze alternative.

Re:Moo

It's very possible to drop cannabis. Haven't you ever heard of a spacecake [wikipedia.org]?

Google Apps for your domain

I recently had my company switch to this and it works pretty well. my boss is especially glad to have something that offers Email and Calendar (tho not as well as Outlook or Evolution). For small businesses who don't want to store their own data I would definitely suggest this service. Of course there is no easy way to sync google calendar with an offline client. but hopefully in the future?

Re:Sneaky google

It's a two way street. google may be able to easily take others customers, but it means google can lose customers just as easily.

It's why you will have to wait a long time to see MSFT do something similar.

Re:Apple responds:

Also, were the stage littered with chairs after he'd finished speaking?

Re:Apple responds:

Please mod parent up: +1 hilarious