14 DAY TRIAL // Google seems committed to its Data Liberation Front program which aims to make the data from the various Google services easily exportable and open. The project has been in the works and active for a couple of years but it was just recently revealed and efforts intensified. At the time of the launch Google Docs was high on the agenda and has now gotten the Data Liberation Front treatment with all of the documents and files now easily exportable in bulk.
“Today, we're adding another product to our growing list of liberations: the "Convert, Zip and Download" feature in Google Docs, which allows you to download a bunch — or all — of your Docs simultaneously,” Brian Fitzpatrick, engineering manager for the Data Liberation Front, wrote. “This new feature comes out of a collaboration between the Google Docs engineering team and Google's Data Liberation Front, a small team of engineers that aims to make it easy for you to transfer your personal data in and out of Google's services by building simple import and export functions.”
“Liberating” your data in Google Docs is easy enough. First you have to select the files you want to retrieve, which is probably the hardest part thanks to the less than ideal interface for selection. After this though you can right-click on them and choose the “Export” option, which will bring up a dialog where you can select the formats in which the files will be exported. There are several options including Microsoft Office, Open Office, PDF and other formats, which also vary depending on the file type, document, spreadsheet, bookmark etc.
All that is left to do now is to wait for Google to compress the documents in a zip files to make it more convenient to retrieve them in bulk. If a larger number of files are selected this may take a while so if you don't want to wait Google can send you an email with a link to the compressed file when it is done. The file can have up to 500 MB, more than enough for most cases. No company wants you to leave their service of course but having an easy way of doing it is more than just a nice gesture, it shows that it cares about its users enough to give them the tools they want even if it may be 'detrimental' to the service in a way.
