Periodic Ramblings

Yesterday, I mentioned in my post on Evernote that having the ability to take my data with me was extremely important in regards to cloud applications.  To that extent, Google has formed an organization within an organization to address this for Google products.

The Data Liberation Front is an internal group at Google that has a charter to make sure that data users have within Google applications is accessible and can be “liberated” from the application itself.

When you go to the home page for The Data Liberation Front, there are links on the home page to some of the most popular Google applications which when clicked take you to a  page describing how to get your data in and out of the application.  For examples, Google Docs is on there and the page listing how to get data in and out, lists the various import/export options and hints for exporting all your documents at one time instead of individually.  I noticed that some applications have a bulk ability to export your data, while some still are on an item by item basis.

This is a step in the right direction for any “cloud” based organization.  Providing APIs is one thing, but if your primary audience are not developers, this does not provide an easily accessible solution.  The majority of users are going to want that easy click or menu option for importing/exporting data.

So, if you are like me and want to have the ability to get to your data, either for backup or just in case you want to move to another service, this page will at least answer the questions for Google applications.