Google CEO — Take Your Data and Run 116
BobB writes to tell us that Google is promising to make the data they store for end users more portable and is urging other companies to do the same. From the article: "Making it simple for users to walk away from a Google service with which they are unhappy keeps the company honest and on its toes, and Google competitors should embrace this data portability principle, Eric Schmidt said at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco."
taken (Score:1, Funny)
Take my post (Score:2)
Just Sayin'
Kudos to them (Score:2, Interesting)
Obvious first steps..? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Seriously, good initiative.
Evolution hooks into Gmail would be sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Evolution hooks into Gmail would be sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
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--Brian Boyko, New Media Comm. Spec., NetQoS
--www.networkperformancedaily.com [networkper...edaily.com]
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Difficult for more complex data? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Difficult for more complex data? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Revenue - Costs = Profits
If revenue equals "0" (ie giving away for free), then profits would have to be less than or equal to 0.
If the company collects advertising fees, then the product is not for free. In fact, the service being provided is YOU, in that YOU are the product, which advertisers are paying for. You recieve no profits, on the other hand, as you are choosing in-kind compensation.
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Re:Difficult for more complex data? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't stand as much to lose from any one customer leaving, but they face as much of a problem as anyone else if the same percentage of their customers choose to leave. What Google is gambling is that, if they have a good product, the reduction in the disincentive to give it a whirl that comes from people knowing up front that if they decide to leave, it will be painless will gain them more customers than easing out migration will lose them. And also that someone that has a good experience leaving one Google service may be more likely to try another Google service.
Joel has a good article on this (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder if Google will forward your gmail address if you decide to quit?
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One of the reasons I used to hate to change ISPs was I had to change my email address - now I use gmail so I never have to worry about that. If I want to leave gmail, I can and not lose a thing - they'll even forward my mail free for life. Everyone I explain this and the other finer points of gmail to ends up switching to gmail themselves. It's portable.
Contact lists have always been a pain for
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There should be some "right" to your own information.
for the "omg you google fanboys" people (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:1)
Re:for the "omg you google fanboys" people (Score:4, Insightful)
Not saying it's a bad thing, not saying Google isn't a great company, but I wouldn't take any claims made by x about how great x is at face value.
Wonder if they were thinking of Flickr. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa Web Albums are basically similar services. Flickr is a much bigger and more mature service, but Google's has more features and offers more control -- in particular, it implements some features that folks on Flickr have been begging for, literally for years in some cases.
(For example, Web Albums lets you upload photos to an "unlisted" album, which you can then send out special invitation emails out from; only people with the special URL in the email can access the photos. Flickr provides no such method of control; either your photos are public and open to the world, or they're open only to specific Flickr members you designate as 'friends' or 'family.' Basically, if you want to share photos only with your family, Flickr wants you to sign them all up for Yahoo IDs and Flickr memberships. Yeah, right.)
But once you have a few hundred photos up on Flickr, it's difficult to migrate off of. If you have them all carefully organized in iPhoto or something, then maybe you can do it, but if you've uploaded a few photos from here, a few from there, scattered across a dozen computers or emailed from mobile phones, there's no easy way to extract everything and migrate it to a different service. You're basically stuck with Yahoo, and the longer you stay with them, the more photos you upload
If the data was more easily transferable, then people could migrate from one service to the next. As adoption of Google's Web Albums is hobbled directly by the difficulty of moving off of Flickr, I saw this as one possible interpretation of the article's meaning.
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http://developer.yahoo.com/flickr/ [yahoo.com]
http://www.flickrbits.com/ [flickrbits.com]
http://greggman.com/pages/flickrdown.htm [greggman.com]
That doesn't help you get your data into something else, but out isn't really an issue.
Re:Wonder if they were thinking of Flickr. (Score:5, Informative)
"Maybe"?
Flickr is one of the most open and programmable sites out there. Check out http://www.flickr.com/services/api/ [flickr.com] -- absolutely everything you can do at Flickr, you can do programatically.
There are thousands of third party utilities that operate over Flickr photos, including many that will download all your photos along with all the metadata. There's even a perl module for it, Net::Flickr::Backup.
Flickr vs Web Albums (Score:2)
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Flickr: the majour feature I like is ability to communicate with other photographers, share opinions and expertise; I may see the photos I like and show my photos to people who enjoy them. So, social interaction is essential feature for my usage of Flickr.
Picasaweb: I find it easier to just share a new bunch of photos quickly, just with a couple of clicks in Picasa. Ability to make
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Yes, because we all know that as soon Google does something Microsoft must follow suit. And since when does a company have to behave with a
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Umm, obviously? But that doesn't make it bullshit unless Google fails to live up to this themselves in markets where they already have strong dominance (eg. Gmail).
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Yeah, Eric Schmidt makes some vague promise about what they're going to do and you guys start fawning over them like it's actually happened.
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If Google makes their data more portable, then everyone else will be forced to, especially after they've come out and asked others to.
Now imagine, if you can move all your data from $SERVICE to Google, and the only thing keeping you with $SERVICE is your data.
Basically, by allowing this, Google says you can leave the coolest hangout and go to other hangouts, but others should also be able to leave their hangouts and come hang out with Google.
Guess what's
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I have my issues with them. I also appreciate much of what they do.
Do no evil is ok... and do good might be better.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
Sayings
A NaNoWriMo contest novel in the writing
use under CC BY-SA (most copyleft license CC provides)
Google's Image (Score:1)
Better yet.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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POP does this, sort of. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure what happens the first time you connect, because it's been a while that I've been using it, but if I read my email via the web interface (say at work, or at a friend's house) those same messages will still be downloaded via POP the next time I connect it. Even if I've already read/responded/archived those messages (actually it downloads sent messages, too). So this results in me hav
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I've gotten fed up with waiting for GMail to load all the time, so I'll be getting a client soon and doing what you're doing. Gmail has fast downloads, spam handling, a tonne of storage and a nice interface, so I'll be sticking with them (their disadvantage is privacy concer
Cool, thanks. (Score:1)
You don't lose a whole lot in moving from the web interface to a local mailreader; Google's spam headers that it uses for handing still come through in your downloaded messages, so you can set your local spamfilters to take advantage of them. (Though you might want to use with some care; I have servers that email me logs at night, and Gmail has always perce
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The only reason I've not ported most of my docs there is that there's no simple way to backup all of them at once.
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It's why you will have to wait a long time to see MSFT do something similar.
This is a big gamble... (Score:4, Interesting)
The technological aspect pales in comparison to the message that "The biggest reason to use us is that you don't have to," and its corollary, "People who use our services do so because they want to, not because we have them locked in."
Go on, take the money and run (Score:2, Funny)
API for Contacts? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone send this article to Palm? I'm sick of having to export my Palm contacts as vcards and import them into Yahoo (Yes Yahoo - Gmail only accepts csv).
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Moo (Score:3, Funny)
Judge: John Doe, what is your claim against the defendant?
John Doe: Mr Google Man said my data would be portable. When i asked him where my data was, he said "search me".
Judge: Mr. Google Man, did you indeed say "search me".
Mr. Google Man: Yes sir, i did.
Judge: And why? Did you not have the data in a portable fashion?
Mr. Google Man: Yes, i did. When i said "search me", i mean to go to the google home page, and search for it.
Judge: And why should he search for it?
Mr. Google Man: The new privatedata.google.com (beta) has easy access to everyone's private information, and he could access it more easily there than anywhere else.
Judge: Do you mean to say that people's private data, for example, mine, is easily availabe?
Mr. Google Man: Yes sir. The Google Man can!
John Doe: I thought the it was the Candy Man that can, er could, can could, yes could.
Judge: The Candy Man was arrested a few years ago for inappropriate relations with a child.
Mr. Google Man: John Doe is the Candy Man.
Judge: Is he now?
Mr. Google Man: Yes sir. A simple search on gimmethegoodsonmyneighbor.google.com (beta) will show that during the investigation most blogs thought he was him.
Judge: Blogs??
Mr. Google Man: You're honor, i move that we drop this case. Jusst like you dropped marijuana right before you came on the bench.
Judge: Strike that from the record!
Judge: Motion to Dismiss accepted. John Doe will pay the court costs.
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You forgot...
Judge: Strike that from the record!
Court stenographer: I'm sorry, your honor, but we started uploading "the record" to courtproceedings.google.com (beta) because of data portability. As a result, remarks can no longer be stricken.
Judge: What?!
Mr. Google Man: Well, he can delete the comment, but it may still be searchable on strickenfromtherecord.google.com (beta) for an indeterminate period.
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Border Crossings (Score:1)
But will they follow through with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
who is going to encourage everyone else to get on the data portability bandwagon?"
Well, whoever stands to gain the most from having users which can come and go as they please. I should acknowledge that I realize this kind of portability would be beneficial to both Google and web users in general. However, I don't see this going over so well with the likes of Yahoo and Hotmail (I don't want to pay an annual fee to prevent my account from being deleted or deactivated, dagnabit!). One could make a fairly good argument that google has some of the best-in-class services on the web, and they know it.
It will be interesting to see if/how they follow through on this. I would be much more comfortable using some of their services if I knew I could do an XML or equivalent type data dump and leave if I felt the need.
- Wi-Fizzle Research [wi-fizzle.com]
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And openness as far as transfers out as well as in is a good way to underline that they have the best-in-class services, because it makes services not similarly open suspect ("why are they trying to lock me in?")
Can't be the only one (Score:3, Funny)
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The title is very misleading.
But then, I trust Google more than that.
******
Freedom is a state of mind. A mind is a state of being. Stay the fuck out of my mind and my being. - Corporate Avenger
******
I didn't steal your sig, I just borrowed it. Here it is back.
Thank You.
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Actually, I was wondering if he was saying "We're going down! Grab your data and run while you can! It's GOOGLEGEDDON!!
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Kudos (Score:2)
a message to Eric (Score:1)
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I'm happy with the current "ads on the far side of the page where my brain doesn't even register their existence..."
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if they can afford to give you smtp and pop access, perhaps imap too.
Overheard in Redmond (Score:2)
Clarification (Score:4, Informative)
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Now if only.. (Score:3, Interesting)
from hosted apps to hosted OS (Score:1)
The most basic web based interface would be a AJAX based command line over https, so you can login as root.
A more sophisticated one would be using a GUI-ish web application.
Finally, when you are at your computer and not in an airport public terminal or internet cafe, you can use special purpose client software for remote desktop access.
All your gmail's attachments, docs, or spreadsheet you edit would end up on your computer, and could
Great, now if only they would let me **delete** it (Score:3)
Give the users some real power. Let them decide how Google uses their data.
PS,
Yes, I do know that many SD readers use proxies and delete cookies and such but this does not make my point any less significant for most users. I'm not in the camp that thinks that users should have to be programers to have any privacy rights.
Re:Great, now if only they would let me **delete** (Score:2)
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Basic rule of privacy and security: The only way to guarantee that records aren't released into the wild is not to collect them in the first place.
"Who cares what some computer uses to process information, so long as it's just a computer observing the data?"
As long as the data exists it can be demanded by the government through National Security Letters and by corporations and individuals in lawsuits, including divorce suits. So, yes, the very exis
Conspiracy theory (Score:1)
But will Google let it go? (Score:1)
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I agree, but you're saying it like you're forced to use Google.
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Google is willingly trespassing the line between public information - what can be found on the open internet - and private information, i.e. what is *not* in the open.
Exit Strategy (Score:2)
They should see if people they are thinking of doing business with have provided an exit strategy for them should things not work out. A company/person that put you first would be happy to do so.
So many only want to provide an entrance strategy. They want to get you easily into their world and then lock your hip in.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
Sayings
A NaNoWriMo novel in the making (copyleft type license)
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Right now I'm converting the last of my AppleWorks documents, since Apple have clearly decided to let the product die...
"your data"? (Score:1)
is this just pretend "your data", or so I actually own my own stuff when stored on google filesystems?
Isn't this one of MS's Pillars of Monopoly? (Score:2)
Isn't the closed Office file formats one of the things that keeps Office totally and completely locked into the worldwide corporation? I'm really thinking more of .xls than .doc, but they're both barely compatible between different machines to say nothing of different office suites or even types of application. Methinks this is another Google strike against Microsoft ...
And on a more general note: data portability barely works WITHIN companies - to say nothing of making an effort to allowing customers to
how about a way to get data INTO google? (Score:2)
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"As long as the data exists it can be demanded by the government through National Security
being able to take the data has more value... (Score:1)
All Fluff and no substance (Score:2)
Lots of talk in this article, no actual info. Im sure its 'coming soon'.
Re:Wonder if they were thinking of Flickr. (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I don't know why my mom couldn't find that.
~jeff
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Google Apps for your domain (Score:1)
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