
The Data Liberation Front - Getting Your data from google services  - 3ds
http://www.dataliberation.org/
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mildweed
This is a great start. I'm glad Google has the wisdom to devote a team to just
this goal. I look forward to end-user tools they may develop to further
accelerate this progress.

~~~
mr_luc
I agree, mildweed. Especially about the end-user tools.

It looks good to do this, and it is good. It's all win, and clearly it sets
them apart.

That being said, in many cases, their answer is "There's an API for that." Why
can't it be exported into a file format that will work in (at least some)
other programs right off the bat? Surely there exists at least some suitable
existing file format for the kind of data stored in Calendar, for instance.

I don't know why anyone would leave google apps for MS Office, but if they
wanted to get their info out of Google Calendar, reading "There's the iCal
API" doesn't actually _sound_ that liberated to an end user.

Someone could make a tool that uses the api to convert the data, but it'd be
nice if they provided data export into an existing format whenever one exists.

( see the disclaimer above; yes, they're the only ones doing this, it's
awesome, etc. )

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billybob
There are inherent privacy issues with any cloud service, and even more with a
company as big as Google.

Still, I'm VERY impressed with how easy they make it to take your data and
leave. Can you imagine Facebook helping you migrate to another social network?

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maxcap
Liberate - sure; Delete - maybe later (if ever).

~~~
patio11
If this worries you, assume nothing you type can be ever deleted.

I own a very, VERY small web application. It takes input from users and,
potentially, saves it to the database, then performs operations on it.

Suppose a user types "foobar" into my application, waits a while, and then
tells me "Hey, I want you to totally erase any evidence that I ever typed
"foobar". Well, um, I don't think it is physically possible for me to do so.

Minimally, "foobar" is now present in my database. I can zap that fairly
easily. Foobar might also be present at a few places in memcached, which are
difficult to me to calculate but theoretically accessible to me. I suppose if
they're theoretically accessible I could, with significant effort, call them
up again, which means that with significant effort I can delete them. OK, zap.

Then I have backups of my database. And here's where delete starts to become a
matter of "Uh oh, now we're talking hard." I can't just blow away information
in a database backup -- I'd have to unpack it, load it into a database (binary
dumps = do not work on me with ad hoc tools!), blow away the record, then
save. This would have to be done very carefully to avoid nasty effects if two
or more people wanted to blow away data at the same time, since maintaining
ACID guarantees is pretty difficult when you've got multiple independent
copies of the same database running around. At this point, I'm already
strongly inclined to say "If it ever hits the database backups, it potentially
stays until doomsday."

Then we have server backups. My server is a VPS. If you were in the database
backup saved on disk at T1, when a server backup happened (which freezes an
image of the VPS in time so that I can return to exactly the same state as
T1), then _even if I blow away the backup_ there is ANOTHER opaque backup in
an even more opaque data structure. So I'd have to spin up another VPS from
the image (for each image I have), deal with the pains of moving that to the
present day/time, load each backup on the VPS, blow away your record, refreeze
the database, then refreeze the VPS.

All of this unfreezing and refreezing presents many, many opportunities for me
to corrupt other users' data, which is the reason I have the backups in the
first place. Corrupting data is unacceptable.

Except, wait, I'm not the only one who has copies of my images! Slicehost also
has redundant backups of the images because I can't lose an image if they lose
the box the image is on! So I'd need to somehow gain access of their backups
(which I have _no control over_ ) to spin up the VPS to spin up the backup to
nuke the record to backup the DB to snapshot the VPS to remake the backup of
the hard drive containing hundreds of images from people who are not me.

EXCEPT WAIT! It is conceivable that, without notice to me, Slicehost has moved
from owning their own backup media into a cloud storage solution. Which, for
reliability, would duplicate the backup machine multiple times! So now we need
to access each of the the copies of the backup machine to spin up each of the
images to spin up the database so we can nuke the record to save the database
to snapshot the image to back up the snapshot to replicate the backup machine
which persists the backups of the snapshots containing the backups of the
database which holds your record.

So, yep, that's where I am. You probably did not read my privacy policy, but
I'm pretty sure it says something to the effect of "I make no guarantees about
being able to delete your data." That is as much as I am going to say of the
matter. As soon as you give me the data to hold for a _nanosecond_ it could
very well be out of my control to ever delete again.

~~~
maxcap
Liberation is good - Google is good - so are privacy agreements.

A better name for the site could be "Grab a Copy of Your Data!" - much more
accurate. Liberate implies that you are actually getting your data back -
which you're not...you're getting...a.....copy.

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idm
I can't help but think there's something ironic or cynical about the site's
branding...

EDIT: from the FAQ (<http://www.dataliberation.org/home/faq>)

Quote: "What's with the logo?

It grew out of the fact that we see ourselves fighting for the freedom of the
users. So basically, it's another joke. Har har har. :-)"

~~~
mattcottingham
Absolutely. Reminds me of this:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/29/william_davies_ask_v...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/29/william_davies_ask_vs_google/)

Ask.com's terribly misguided advertising campaign.

~~~
idm
Ha! Exactly.

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lsb
Excel really took off when they allowed you to _SAVE_ in Lotus format.

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lupin_sansei
I thought it was because it was the first real Windows based spreadsheet.
Didn't Lotus take ages to port to Windows?

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antirez
Very cool move. Especially coming form a big company like this, and indeed it
was a smart move to "design" this part of Google as a stand-alone team instead
to delegate every other team to take care about data IO.

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muriithi
The name sounds scary though. Reminds me of Whackos belonging to the "Earth
Liberation Front" who toppled several AM radio towers in Washington a few
weeks ago. Reason; "AM radio waves cause adverse health effects including a
higher rate of cancer, harm to wildlife, and that the signals have been
interfering with home phone and intercom lines."

~~~
socillion
Looks to me like its an intentional play on Earth/Animal Liberation Front (aka
ELF and ALF).

~~~
patio11
Which are themselves references to any number of leftist revolutionary
movements, because remember kids, Communism is cool.

Like Che T-shirts, I severely doubt anybody ever thought through "Hey, I
wonder what an all-red color scheme and the words 'Liberation Front' say about
our values here". Hint: it isn't "Do no evil."

~~~
DenisM
Lighten up.

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mattcottingham
I can export. Can I erase?

