Google Public Policy Blog: Introducing DataLiberation.org: Liberate your data!
[well I have tried to get 7GB of Gmail into a new 25GB pad up the road in Google Apps for Domains street and I had to leave 5GB behind so I read with interest]
Imagine you want to move out of your apartment. When you ask your landlord about the terms of your previous lease, he says that you are free to leave at any time; however, you cannot take all of your things with you – not your photos, your keepsakes, or your clothing. If you’re like most people, a restriction like this may cause you to rethink moving altogether. Not only is this a bad situation for you as the tenant, but it’s also detrimental to the housing industry as a whole, which no longer has incentive to build better apartments at all.
Although this may seem like a strange analogy, this pretty accurately describes the situation my team, Google’s Data Liberation Front, is working hard to combat from an engineering perspective. We’re a small team of Google Chicago engineers (named after a Monty Python skit about the Judean People’s Front) that aims to make it easy for our users to transfer their personal data in and out of Google’s services by building simple import and export functions. Our goal is to “liberate” data so that consumers and businesses using Google products always have a choice when it comes to the technology they use.
via Google Public Policy Blog: Introducing DataLiberation.org: Liberate your data!.
For every Judean People’s Front there is a People’s Front of Judea, Data, lig amach é!