14 DAY TRIAL // Google has become an Internet giant and, though it has so far managed to retain most of its startup ideals and brand image, it's getting harder to uphold the “Don't be evil” motto when you employ 20,000 people working on maybe hundreds of products. The company has seen its fair share of controversy, but it is arguably doing a lot better than many companies its size. The latest move in its quest for an open Internet is the Data Liberation Front, which is working on making it easier for users to leave any Google product and take their data with them.
“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,” Brian Fitzpatrick, Data Liberation engineering manager, wrote about the project. “What does product liberation look like? Said simply, a liberated product is one which has built-in features that make it easy (and free) to remove your data from the product in the event that you'd like to take it elsewhere. At the heart of this lies our strong commitment to an open web run on open standards.”
Making it easy for users to transfer their data is somewhat of a risky move for a company, as no one wants their users to leave. But being able to do so is not only very healthy for the users and businesses, but also for the products themselves. Google believes that, by providing easy and free means for users to take their data elsewhere, basically making it easier for them to leave, determines the companies running the services to work harder to make them stay and offer them compelling reasons to do so, rather than just the fear that they will have to leave everything behind.
The project itself is actually a couple of years old, but, today, Google is launching a new website at dataliberation.org, detailing what the group is doing and what products have been 'liberated' to date. Since it was created, the team has liberated several core services, allowing users to take their blogs from Blogger to WordPress or any other platforms and Gmail users to export their emails. The Google developer tools, including App Engine, also make it easy for them to migrate. In the short-term future, Google will also liberate Docs and Sites.