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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

#71
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Black hair = PII, address = PII, drives black BMW = PII, any of this information together with other information could be used to identify an individual and that is exactly the issue. It is like saying that one brick is a house just because multiple bricks can make a house. If you gather enough data you can potentially point to specific individual. Just like unique PC fingerprinting - gather enough data points so tha…

AFAIK according to the GDPR, knowing each individual fact is fine. Only the combination is PD.

Hence, installing a camera that counts black-haired people, another that counts people entering some location, a third counting people having a BMW is perfectly fine. Merging the 3 recorded tapes to identify a person is not. Giving the 3 tapes to someone else is only OK if you guarantee somehow they wont do the merge.

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

#72
post #44

i'm very curious about something -- people here rave about the takeout -- does anyone actually use the thing? i've tried the takeout option about a year ago when i wanted to switch from google photos to apple photos and it was an absolute mess, it exported random zipped folders, all broken up (i think there were 14 of thema ll together), multiple images were duplicates, somehow it managed to corrupt apple format of p…

My brother passed away very suddenly a couple of years ago. Google Takeout and similar services were a godsend for extracting and archiving everything from his accounts. As far as I know, everything exported fine, thiugh he didn’t use Google Photos.

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

#74
post #44

i'm very curious about something -- people here rave about the takeout -- does anyone actually use the thing? i've tried the takeout option about a year ago when i wanted to switch from google photos to apple photos and it was an absolute mess, it exported random zipped folders, all broken up (i think there were 14 of thema ll together), multiple images were duplicates, somehow it managed to corrupt apple format of p…

I just used it to pull over 350gigs of photos. Not fun. They really make it hard to reimport photos elsewhere. I wish their app just had a download all.

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

#76
post #10

Does this export the youtube video files as well?

Yes it does (I’ve done this). However up until recently you could NOT export yt vids from any “sub” yt accounts. Ie I have one google account but 4x YouTube accounts under that google account. Google support confirmed that you could only export your YouTube uploads for the primary account. However as of about 6 months ago this was fixed and you can now takeout yt vids for all “child” accounts as well (and I have confirmed this). Altough it is a bit janky (as is all of takeout) as you need to use a separate yt/takeout interface to do so.

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

#77
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…

See also: https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ .

Apparently I'm doing something right because mine is empty.

"You have no available activity to show at this time."

Maybe because I've never had a habit of linking phone apps, web apps, etc to Facebook. I tend to keep different accounts completely isolated. Which is why Google really bugs me, I don't like that my YouTube, Gmail, etc are all the same account.

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

#78
post #44

i'm very curious about something -- people here rave about the takeout -- does anyone actually use the thing? i've tried the takeout option about a year ago when i wanted to switch from google photos to apple photos and it was an absolute mess, it exported random zipped folders, all broken up (i think there were 14 of thema ll together), multiple images were duplicates, somehow it managed to corrupt apple format of p…

I think breaking up is a ZIP limitation (max archive size is 4GB) I'm exporting it regularly (although I certainly don't have 120Gb of photos on it). You can choose an option for regular exports (every two months), and delivery method (e.g. Google Drive). Then I have a script that runs daily, mounts google drive, moves the takeout locally if it's present and removes from google drive (so it doesn't take space). Then…

Hmm, I've seen ZIP files over 4GiB - not from takeout but from others

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

#79
post #68
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost like they made the ux really hard to use for a reason, eh? All that engineering talent and that's the best solution? Lol.

More like, they're just wanting to make sure they're legally covered. There is no added benefit for the company in making that experience better. Source: working on a product engineering team for a larger company. Why would we upheave our roadmap for something that doesn't help provide explicit value to our product offerings? We've got a list a mile long of improvements and new capabilities to deliver on, and no engi…

I don't see how your statement contradicts your parent comment's. Looks like Google just did the bare minimum to cover themselves legally (as you said). But that shouldn't mean that they can't make the experience better.

As for no engineer liking working through legal hoops, my observations disagree. Many absolutely don't care. Give them a well-described Jira ticket and they'll happily chip away at it for a year if it's necessary.

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

#80
post #44

i'm very curious about something -- people here rave about the takeout -- does anyone actually use the thing? i've tried the takeout option about a year ago when i wanted to switch from google photos to apple photos and it was an absolute mess, it exported random zipped folders, all broken up (i think there were 14 of thema ll together), multiple images were duplicates, somehow it managed to corrupt apple format of p…

I think breaking up is a ZIP limitation (max archive size is 4GB) I'm exporting it regularly (although I certainly don't have 120Gb of photos on it). You can choose an option for regular exports (every two months), and delivery method (e.g. Google Drive). Then I have a script that runs daily, mounts google drive, moves the takeout locally if it's present and removes from google drive (so it doesn't take space). Then…

"Then indeed, inside you have mess with some data in HTML, some in JSON, etc. But well, at least you can parse it..."

how is some regular schmuck that wants to move his data out of google to another service supposed to determine what they actually have to parse? the user simply uploads pictures into the system but gets garbage out?

the scarry part here is that google makes it extermely easy to suck in the data but for an average user it's extremly difficult to get back out and takeout is absolutely not a good solution.

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