Google today announced “new investments and continued collaboration with industry partners” for the Data Transfer Project (DTP) that it launched in 2018 to make switching to competing services easier.
The Data Transfer Project was founded by Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, and SmugMug to “simplify data portability for people around the world.”
Unlike traditional methods of moving your files from one service to another, which require reliable broadband or drawing on mobile data plans, with DTP people can simply authorize a copy of the data to safely move to a new service without having to download it to a personal device first.
Google today pledged that it would “expand the open source libraries that facilitate more types of data transfer and allow more companies and organizations to participate in DTP.” This involves providing $3 million over the next five years and committing “hundreds of hours of our engineers’ time.” Additionally:
…we will continue to support organizations and researchers working on portability and interoperability, and collaborate with them to develop industry-wide standards and guidance on this important issue.
Meanwhile, Google Takeout will continue to see improvements and “new ways to move your files to different services with DTP technology.” The company also revealed some new usage numbers:
On average we see 8.2 million exports per month with Google Takeout, and in 2021, more than 400 billion files were exported, which has doubled since 2019.
More on Google Takeout:
- Play Music is now fully gone as Google Takeout downloads stop [Updated]
- Google Takeout now lets you select Photos albums for direct Flickr, OneDrive transfer
- Some Google Photos videos in ‘Takeout’ backups were sent to strangers last November
Author: Abner Li
Source: 9TO5Google
