The Google Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose "goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products." The team, which consults with other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" Google products, currently supports 57 products. The purpose of the Data Liberation Front is to ensure that data can be migrated from Google once an individual or company stops using their services or the service is discontinued by Google.
Google Takeout
On June 28, 2011, Google's Data Liberation Front engineering team released their first product, after 4 years in development, called Google Takeout, which allows a Google user to export data from supported services.
Service Date "liberated" Notes Google Buzz June 28, 2011 Google Circles and Contacts June 28, 2011 Picasa Web Albums June 28, 2011 Google profile June 28, 2011 Google stream June 28, 2011 +1 July 15, 2011 Google Tasks August 1, 2011 via the Google Tasks Porter (not part of Google Takeout) Google Voice September 6, 2011 Gmail chat logs September 15, 2011 Google Docs January 24, 2012 YouTube September 26, 2012Exports original videos only (no edits made with YouTube Studio) Google Latitude November 14, 2012 Google Reader November 14, 2012Google Calendar December 5, 2013Gmail December 5, 2013
Data Transfer Project
On July 20, 2018, Google's Data Liberation Front engineering team announced the Data Transfer Project in partnership with Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter (now X), an ecosystem which features data portability between multiple online platforms without the need of downloading and re-uploading data.
See also Data portability Data migration Vendor lock-in GDPR
References
External links Homepage Official Data Liberation Blog