Thoughts on dataliberation.org | Monday, September 14th, 2009
Announced today over at the Google Public Policy blog is "DataLiberation.org: Liberate your Data!"
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.
I may be wrong, but I do believe this is the first time I read about an entire team within such a big firm entirely dedicated to the issue of data portability. The irony here is that Google's track record in the past hasn't been perfect - as I've highlighted more than once - and as much as the decidedly non-Googlish branding and informal tone seem to conspire to lend the project a certain dissociation from the big G, it is very much real, as noted by the aforementioned Public Policy post and the wealth of information on how to delete / export your data from Google services.