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

takeout.google.com

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

#31

Post by lorenzhs »

acdha wrote: post #23
imgabe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This doesn't mirror my experience at all, and I think blaming it on fanboys isn't fair. I used Google Takeout recently, had it set to split into 50GB tar.gz chunks, and it worked perfectly fine. I wasn't logged out once, and downloaded the archive with around 90 MB/s (720 mbps). It was a very smooth data export experience. I'm very much not a Google/Android fanboy and avoid Google's services wherever possible. The OP is being downvoted because their experience isn't representative.

EDIT: It does seem that there are more people than I expected for whom the experience isn't as good as the one I had, so maybe Google should test this with (and make it work better on) internet connections that aren't as good as their office lines.

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

#32

Post by texasbigdata »

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.

Do you do this to time stamp changes using a sort of differential technique? Or just for non-reliance on Google.

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

#33

Post by Rygian »

QueensGambit wrote: post #24

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.

I would go further and say "see if their export tool is easy to use and actually works".

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

#34

Post by remus »

neallindsay wrote: post #29
cj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

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

I think that is a step too far. For example, it seems quite clear that a dataset of daily average temperatures from the top of Everest is not personally identifying information.

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

#35

Post by dredmorbius »

Clampower wrote: post #30
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?

Depending on when you did this, likely somewhat.

One of the positives of the Google+ shutdown was that Google Takeout saw a major overhaul around February of 2019. Third-party tools (Alois Bělaška's Friends+Me was invaluable https://blog.friendsplus.me/) still proved very useful, and gave capabilities missing from Google's offerings.

Dealing with data exports remains challenging.

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

#38

Post by dalbasal »

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…

Good info.

Any organized efforts to export and donate data? Data is not data in some important senses unless it's aggregated. A "watch-them-watch-us" dynamic can't exist if one side is aggregated and the other isn't.

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

#39

Post by ramses0 »

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.

“Take your laptop to a google campus and download on their wifi.”

LoL

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

#40

Post by acdha »

lorenzhs wrote: post #31
acdha wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This doesn't mirror my experience at all, and I think blaming it on fanboys isn't fair. I used Google Takeout recently, had it set to split into 50GB tar.gz chunks, and it worked perfectly fine. I wasn't logged out once, and downloaded the archive with around 90 MB/s (720 mbps). It was a very smooth data export experience. I'm very much not a Google/Android fanboy and avoid Google's services wherever possible. The OP…

I’ve also used it and the original poster’s experience rang truer than yours. Most people do not have gigabit internet connections and manually downloading the default smaller chunks is annoying.
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