Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

takeout.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 139 posts

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#21

Post by imgabe »

rathish_g wrote: post #14

It's really hard to download from takeout.google.com these days. I have 86 gb data on my google account and is trying really hard to export. - the export size is around 176 gb. Mostly photos. - it has the option to move to one drive or box. But 100 gb on Google will be 200 gb on one drive. Images are copied into multiple folders to recreate the albums. Note that google photos automatically create albums for family an…

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I went to download my photos today from Google Photos after reading about the end of the unlimited storage. The interface is incredibly annoying. It split them into 2GB zip files, which is fine, but then it takes multiple clicks to get each download to start. Oh, and then it logs you out every 5 minutes so you have to re-enter your password.

It's pretty clear they were not super concerned about making it a user-friendly process.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#22

Post by epanchin »

rathish_g wrote: post #14

It's really hard to download from takeout.google.com these days. I have 86 gb data on my google account and is trying really hard to export. - the export size is around 176 gb. Mostly photos. - it has the option to move to one drive or box. But 100 gb on Google will be 200 gb on one drive. Images are copied into multiple folders to recreate the albums. Note that google photos automatically create albums for family an…

Get faster internet. Take your laptop to a google campus and download on their wifi. Set up a VPS and download and manipulate there.

Plenty of solutions.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#23

Post by acdha »

imgabe wrote: post #21
rathish_g wrote: post #14

It's really hard to download from takeout.google.com these days. I have 86 gb data on my google account and is trying really hard to export. - the export size is around 176 gb. Mostly photos. - it has the option to move to one drive or box. But 100 gb on Google will be 200 gb on one drive. Images are copied into multiple folders to recreate the albums. Note that google photos automatically create albums for family an…

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I went to download my photos today from Google Photos after reading about the end of the unlimited storage. The interface is incredibly annoying. It split them into 2GB zip files, which is fine, but then it takes multiple clicks to get each download to start. Oh, and then it logs you out every 5 minutes so you have to re-enter your password. It's pretty clear they were not s…

If you say something negative about Google you’ll reliably get downvotes from Android fanboys even if it’s completely accurate. (Apple has similar fans, although they seem to be less defensive now that the company is doing so well)

It’s not worth worrying over except as a reminder that rating systems need to handle bad-faith voting.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#24

Post by QueensGambit »

The easiest way to figure out the ethics of the company is to see if their export tool is easy to use. If it is easy, its safe to stay with them, because they are not doing it just for legal compliance. If not, run away from that company as fast as possible.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#25

Post by wombat-man »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #20

I periodically use the takeout service and selectively copy to the 1TB of storage I have on OneDrive (which comes with an Office 365 subscription). Having my digital stuff backed up on two cloud providers is enough for my capacity for risk. I used to make a 3rd backup in Dropbox but don’t do that anymore.

Huh, i was thinking I’d do something similar but upload the file to maybe s3 glacier storage in aws.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#26

Post by thatsnotmepls »

yoaviram wrote: post #17
_odey wrote: post #2

Once the export is done and I see something I don't want to exist anymore, where do I request that data be permanently removed (GDPR style)? Asking as I honestly don't know.

https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/google.com This service will generate an email with a general deletion request. Modify it to ask for the specific information you want deleted. Disclaimer: I'm the creator of this service.

> If you do not normally deal with data protection requests, please forward this email to your Data Protection Officer, or relevant member of staff. Please note that you have 30 days to comply with this request.

Google: "Listen here you little sh*t"

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#27

Post by acdha »

epanchin wrote: post #22
rathish_g wrote: post #14

It's really hard to download from takeout.google.com these days. I have 86 gb data on my google account and is trying really hard to export. - the export size is around 176 gb. Mostly photos. - it has the option to move to one drive or box. But 100 gb on Google will be 200 gb on one drive. Images are copied into multiple folders to recreate the albums. Note that google photos automatically create albums for family an…

Get faster internet. Take your laptop to a google campus and download on their wifi. Set up a VPS and download and manipulate there. Plenty of solutions.

Those aren’t good solutions, they’re workarounds - and if you think about them even slightly you’ll realize they’re not very good:

1. The interface requiring multiple downloads prevents automation or simply waiting out a large transfer, and not having a robust automated retry mechanism ensures wasted time and increases the odds of data loss.

2. Few people have a high-speed free WiFi network nearby. You’re not getting better results at Starbucks or the local library, and Google’s campus networks require logins even if you are one of the few people who lives near one.

3. Setting up a VPS and running downloads from a web app requires money and skills most people don’t have, especially if you care about not accidentally leaking your personal data. If you have enough data to matter, you’ll also hit many providers quota limits or bandwidth charges. If you navigate all of those challenges, you still haven’t solved the problem of getting it home - at best you can now use rsync to remove the manual component of the second transfer.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#28

Post by singron »

MertsA wrote: post #19

Another fun one. Go into Facebook and download your data and look in the ads folder. There's a very helpful "advertisers_who_uploaded_a_contact_list_with_your_information.html" page that lists every advertiser who somehow obtained your contact data and ran targeted ads to you. There's a lot of sketchy companies out there who I never had any kind of relationship with who somehow managed to obtain email or other contac…

The facebook dump also includes email addresses and phone numbers that you have deleted from your account. After I removed my contact information from my account, I was curious why advertisers were still able to target my account with these uploaded lists, so I guess that explains it.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#29

Post by neallindsay »

cj wrote: post #18
hyperman1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK the GDPR already does this: See first definition of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... You are identifiable by combining multiple factors, even if every individual factor is not enough to be identifiable. If I understand it correctly, the EU 'personal data' (PD) concept is much wider than the US 'Personally Identifiable Information' (PII) concept. You are touching one of the differe…

This is correct. For GDPR purposes, data is PII if it can be used in combination with any other data to identify an individual. Doesn’t matter if the individual data points are not themselves identifying. One thing I’ve been curious about is whether AI and algorithms that can potentially take a huge amount of anonymous data and “identify” a user (but not explicitly), only identify in the sense that the output of the…

> For GDPR purposes, data is PII if it can be used in combination with any other data to identify an individual.

By that definition, all data is PII. There is no information available on this planet that has not been influenced by people.

I'm not trying to be obtuse. I worry about this problem a lot. Obviously we need to keep companies from doing stupid stuff like storing the first digit of a Social Security number (can't identify someone by that!) and then the second digit (also not uniquely identifying!), etc.

On the other hand, what if I have web log files that only store URL, timestamp, and status code? Is that OK? If I get hits for two specific pages within a couple of minutes of each other, and there's only one person on the planet who would know about both those pages, I know they were visiting my site at that time.

People influence the world around them and it feels like privacy laws are trying to prevent companies from understanding that influence. At the same time every other incentive is pushing those companies to understand more.

Re: Google Takeout: Export a copy of your data in Google services

#30

Post by Clampower »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #20

I periodically use the takeout service and selectively copy to the 1TB of storage I have on OneDrive (which comes with an Office 365 subscription). Having my digital stuff backed up on two cloud providers is enough for my capacity for risk. I used to make a 3rd backup in Dropbox but don’t do that anymore.

I once tried to download my Google photos, and it became super messy. I got tons of different folders all with duplicates and other stuff and it was pretty unusable.

Has this improved?

Post reply on HN