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

332 points by pvsukale3 6y ago

sdwolfz 6y ago
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.
- amelius 6y ago
  I think Google Takeout is not meant to give an exhaustive overview of what Google knows about you. It is meant as a service for backup, and migration to other services.
  - lopis 6y ago
    Exactly. Unfortunately GDPR failed to realize that most data companies hold about us is inferred. Data takeouts usually provide you with all data you willingly provided (uploads, reviews, likes, playlists, etc). But most interesting information is missing. How often did I watch each video? When did I open each e-mail? There's so much data that companies collect about your behaviour that is never given back to us.
    - jakubp 6y ago
      GDPR does cover inferred data. Source doesn't matter. Only whether this is data about a specific identifiable person and whether it's covered by the list of protected types of data.
      - lopis 6y ago
        Then the takeouts I've personally taken from Facebook, Spotify and Google were not compliant. They were missing anything interesting and non-obvious.
        fsflover 6y ago
        Yes, and not just in your case: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/#history https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/#history
    - aboringusername 6y ago
      It's entirely possible to collect information to identify a unique human without it being considered PII - combine it all together and maybe add a sprinkle here and there (perhaps public domain info, buying "anonymized" info) and boom, you know who it is. Yet, if you're audited, it's just a series of IDs and numbers, nothing identifying there...Right? If you ask Spotify for your data dump, you'll notice in a lot of the .JSON files the information is encrypted such that you can't understand it (it's just numbers). It's impossible to say whether it's actually stored like this or if they encrypt it before they provide the archive to you. Meta data is almost impossible to legislate against, and as far as I can see, is entirely legal to collect and use as you see fit. How many people in the world are on hackernews, named "lopis", use Firefox 65, have an IP address in $country, use this screen resolution etc etc Easy enough to identify who you are.
      - hyperman1 6y ago
        AFAIK the GDPR already does this: See first definition of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN#d1e1489-1-1 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 differences here.
        cj 6y ago
        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 AI was only possible by correlating individuals granularity enough. I’m almost certain the answer is yes. I’m not clear on whether GDPR addresses that issue or not.
        6y ago
    - kace91 6y ago
      My gdpr requests have usually included inferred data. I'm not sure if it was facebook or tinder's that showed a giant list of categories they thought I fitted in, which was btw hilariously wrong (I'm a 30 y/o single male and I was categorised as a single mom, for example).
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  You'd have to go to the specific Google service that stores the item you want to delete. You can delete emails in Gmail, photos in Google Photos, etc.
  - aboringusername 6y ago
    This is the wrong answer. Right answer: You can go to [1] and [2] and [3] and ask them to delete your information. It's important to retain a copy in writing that they have removed your information. If a copy is ever found online (in a data breach or otherwise) you would be able to enact legal rights as a result of their GDPR breach. I would encourage people who upload data to leave "fingerprints" in their accounts, such as certain photos, emails, and other data that you have ONLY created on this service (for example, email your own gmail account a unique email, if it's ever leaked, you know where it came from). It's the same way Spotify's GDPR tool does NOT give you all the information they store, yet if you ask via their DPO (usually privacy@) you get a lot more data, rather sneaky way of hiding their true data collection. ALWAYS use email or a physical letter, ALWAYS get a reply by the organization when enacting your GDPR rights, your lawyer/legal authority will be very thankful ;) AND NEVER EVER USE AUTOMATED TOOLS! The chances are, there is data that isn't included within them. For example, go ahead right this second and submit a SAR for "technical log information" to Google, this data is NOT included in their official tools and you will be amazed how much they're storing!! [1]: https://support.google.com/policies/answer/9581826?hl=en https://support.google.com/policies/answer/9581826?hl=en [2]: https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar [3]: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?p=privpol_remove https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?p=pr...
    - H8crilA 6y ago
      RE [2]: You mean "About which Google product" -> "Other", "What personal data are you seeking?" -> "technical log information" ?
- yoaviram 6y ago
  https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/google.com 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.
  - thatsnotmepls 6y ago
    > 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"
  - cromantic 6y ago
    Options are GDPR which applies to European Union residents and CCPA which applies to Californians. Is there anything for people within the US who are residents of the other 49 states?
dusted 6y ago
Does this export the youtube video files as well?
- izacus 6y ago
  I think you need to go directly to YouTube for that - tap your avatar on YouTube, choose "Your Data in YouTube" and there's the option.
- flemhans 6y ago
  Yes. The original files even (I got a WMV file out)
- bobbob1921 6y ago
  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.
rathish_g 6y ago
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 and trips. - tried to use 2gb zip to split the files. We have to click and download 100+ pieces of zip files. Even if one file is corrupt we are done. All this shows in a modal window. We can't download more than 5-8 files at a time. - split it into 5gb zip files. Now download numbers are manageable, but the network keeps dropping and we have to download again. We can only retry 3 times making the entire set useless. - no options to separate videos and photos. - we only have a week to takeout and test the whole thing. TLDR; it's designed to make sure that we don't actually take out the files...
- londons_explore 6y ago
  You can takeout each service seperately...
- imgabe 6y ago
  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.
  - acdha 6y ago
    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.
buildbot 6y ago
Has anyone had any luck using takeout for 10tb plus accounts?
- rmkrmk 6y ago
  I get export errors with about 250gb in Google
  - buildbot 6y ago
    Matches with me experience, the only effective way I've ever managed to export my drive is via FUSE mount systems :/
    - itakealotfoto 6y ago
      Hey, I have about 17tb of data. Is it even worth doing takeout? Are there any programmers out there who might wanna take on directly transferring this data to a Google one unlimited account? I have seen some third party companies. But I just don’t trust them. I need someone who will write a script to run a download and upload offsite where there is a fat pipeline and instant data transfer.
MertsA 6y ago
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 contact data. Bit of an enlightening experience as to just how widespread your personal data is being shared, even if you're somewhat careful of who you give your personal data to.
- singron 6y ago
  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.
  - Closi 6y ago
    Well that clearly sounds like it's not GDPR compliant, but Facebook might have a different policy for the EU.
    - lmkg 6y ago
      Facebook is currently involved in multiple legal battles in Europe about the GDPR, including at least one where it's the instigator. Facebook has different views about what's allowed under the GDPR compared to the people in charge of enforcing the GDPR.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  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.
  - pletsch 6y ago
mark_l_watson 6y ago
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.
- wombat-man 6y ago
  Huh, i was thinking I’d do something similar but upload the file to maybe s3 glacier storage in aws.
- Clampower 6y ago
  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?
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    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/ https://blog.friendsplus.me/) still proved very useful, and gave capabilities missing from Google's offerings. Dealing with data exports remains challenging.
  - tristanperry 6y ago
    I did this 2 days ago, it's the exact same. I used a simple one-liner find/mv command to move all JPGs into the same folder... which made it more decent.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  Do you do this to time stamp changes using a sort of differential technique? Or just for non-reliance on Google.
- tambeb 6y ago
QueensGambit 6y ago
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.
- Rygian 6y ago
  I would go further and say "see if their export tool is easy to use and actually works".
solinent 6y ago
I just deleted it all, it was easier, now I just keep it all on my machine. No more takeout--home cooked meals. I can see why it doesn't appeal to all though.
- choward 6y ago
  I hope you have an encrypted off-site backup somewhere.
  - solinent 6y ago
    I wasn't using Google for anything significant so it was pretty easy to delete it. If I care about a picture I'll print it and keep it in a book, I would never trust a corp that's only been in the data business for 10-15 years, especially one known for stealing your information for advertiser's gain.
    - choward 6y ago
      You don't have to "trust" them. In fact you shouldn't. That's why you encrypt locally first. And if they lose your data you still have it locally. It is good to also have two local copies.
duxup 6y ago
I have this run every few months and then download and backup the archive. I like to think it will be helpful in case of the dreaded 'locked out of google for no reason and no recourse' situation.
- robotnikman 6y ago
  Would be nice if there was a way to automate the process.
  - duxup 6y ago
    Agreed. It does allow you to send the takeouts regularly to google drive, but the amount of data I have is too much for that / fills my drive.
ir77 6y ago
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 pictures and i would have one picture with the same name that was something like 24KB and another one with 1.2MB, etc. if it wasn't for the option (which they took away) of syncing photos to your google drive and copying them out that way, i have no idea what i'd have done, i'd have lost about 120GB of photos and videos going back to 2008. so seriously, do all of you just use the takeout and store it away without actually opening up and trying to use it?
- OskarS 6y ago
  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.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  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.
- axaxs 6y ago
  As I wrote elsewhere, previously. I agree it's a mess, but not the end of the world. Extract the file -not- preserving directory structure(-j flag). Now you just have everything in a single folder. Then delete the metadata files by file extension. This took all of a few seconds to do for each zip.
- pydry 6y ago
  I think people love the idea of takeout more than the thing itself.
- rpdillon 6y ago
  I just finished found through the takeout process for photos last night. 39 2GB archives. Request took a couple of days to process, then I got an email with a bunch of links that they said were good for 7 days. I planned to load them into my Synology download manager, but the takeout system seems to rely heavily on browser state, so Synology couldn't download them. Each took 5 minutes to download at home over WiFi, and the takeout interface demands authentication every 10 minutes. It also reloads the page and reset my position in the download list on every click. I've uploaded and expanded about half the archives on my Synology, and it's currently indexing everything, so I can't comment on the photo issues you've mentioned quite yet. Overall, I'm happy there exists a mechanism to get my photos, but the quality of the experience is truly awful.
raldi 6y ago
Google Takeout is a great solution to the problem of, how do we get Google programmers, without protest, to write functionality into their services to allow Big Brother to acquire a neat and tidy copy of all a user’s data?
- scrollaway 6y ago
  ... what. You're complaining about the one way google users have to reclaim data that is rightfully theirs? You know that if "big brother" wants data, big brother gets backdoors, not polite export requests?
  - raldi 6y ago
    I’m not complaining. I’m marveling at the clever solution to the problem of, “How do we get hundreds of product teams to support our legal obligations without feeling morally conflicted?”
    - scrollaway 6y ago
      What you're saying makes absolutely no sense and doesn't pass Occam's razor. Please back it with some semblance of reasoning at least.
      - raldi 6y ago
        Could you elaborate on that? Do you disagree that Google Takeout is used for government user-data requests, or that absent such functionality, programmers tend to balk at implementing such requests?
        scrollaway 6y ago
        Google takeout is an inefficient tool for government requests, yes. I'm sure it may get used but I highly doubt it's a primary tool in any way. PRISM revealed how much custom tooling is made specifically for governments and for giving back data to them, automatically addressing their requests etc. Takeout is slow, bulky, and its audience is the end user.
LoveMortuus 6y ago
This is actually kinda fun! I have ~17.8GB, so I guess I'm on the lower end, at least as far as what I've seen in these comments!
rasz 6y ago
I was never able to takeout my YT comments. There is no place to report bugs, complain, or ask for help actual human beings working for Google.
steviedotboston 6y ago
I used this recently to take my music out of Google Play Music and import into iTunes. The downloads were pretty slow, but it worked fine!
- yurishimo 6y ago
  Same. Do you know a good way to add meta data to songs? I’ve been carrying around a library since I was a teenager and I when I moved it from Google Play to iTunes, a bunch of the meta data was missing.
  - steviedotboston 6y ago
    Hmm, I didn't notice any missing metadata.
ThomasGalan 6y ago
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kfrzcode 6y ago
I've used Takeout. Nice for them to provide a bundle. That said, I'd love the option to export my Messages content, and that's something I haven't seen anywhere. Has anyone successfully done this for Google Messages? I don't mean backing up to Google Drive, I mean a full-on export.
slhck 6y ago
Well, this works just great: https://i.imgur.com/PZEnuDM.jpg https://i.imgur.com/PZEnuDM.jpg There's a product called "null" without an icon.
tomcam 6y ago
It does not seem to include Gmail. Am I correct, or did I miss some kind of option?
- pxeboot 6y ago
  I used Takeout to export from Gmail last month. It was listed alongside all the other services.
usr1106 6y ago
I don't use Google a lot, but I have an actively used gmail account. I never give its address to anyone and all incoming mail is forwarded from other addresses. I don't send any mail from that account either. I am somewhat worried that their great algorithms will one day decide it's there is some violation of their ToS and close the account. I had that issue even with a paid (well, voucher that came with a PC, but still) Microsoft Drive account, I used in an atypical way (no sharing, all contents encrypted). In the past I used IMAP for backing up my messages, but over time my scripts to do so have fallen into disrepair... Whether takeout would be a way to do somewhat regular backups? Or might that trigger their algorithms, that you are not a good customer? Has anybody read the ToS whether anything is mentioned about takeout?
harshitaneja 6y ago
Even though I love using Google services, account being blocked and losing access to everything from domains to personal photos and all important docs in drive is a concern that is haunting me since seeing an uptick in these stories. Maybe it is that I am observing them more but in any case reducing Google dependence and having a strategy for account block scenario has become a need due to the large impact it would have on my life in the current scenario. I really wish google takeout had an API to request takeouts at weekly or whatever works, instead of the bimonthly (once in 2 months) option currently offered. Then one could keep data in Google services and not have serious concerns as at most the loss would be of a week's worth of data. Also on this note- does anyone have any recommendations for domain registrars? I cannot continue to have my domains on Google even though it has a great UX.
mderazon 6y ago
"You have Advanced Protection switched on, which means that it could take days or even weeks for your files to be ready to download, but we'll email you when they're ready."

332 points by pvsukale3 6y ago

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.

amelius 6y ago
I think Google Takeout is not meant to give an exhaustive overview of what Google knows about you. It is meant as a service for backup, and migration to other services.
- lopis 6y ago
  Exactly. Unfortunately GDPR failed to realize that most data companies hold about us is inferred. Data takeouts usually provide you with all data you willingly provided (uploads, reviews, likes, playlists, etc). But most interesting information is missing. How often did I watch each video? When did I open each e-mail? There's so much data that companies collect about your behaviour that is never given back to us.
  - jakubp 6y ago
    GDPR does cover inferred data. Source doesn't matter. Only whether this is data about a specific identifiable person and whether it's covered by the list of protected types of data.
    - lopis 6y ago
      Then the takeouts I've personally taken from Facebook, Spotify and Google were not compliant. They were missing anything interesting and non-obvious.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        Yes, and not just in your case: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/#history https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/#history
  - aboringusername 6y ago
    It's entirely possible to collect information to identify a unique human without it being considered PII - combine it all together and maybe add a sprinkle here and there (perhaps public domain info, buying "anonymized" info) and boom, you know who it is. Yet, if you're audited, it's just a series of IDs and numbers, nothing identifying there...Right? If you ask Spotify for your data dump, you'll notice in a lot of the .JSON files the information is encrypted such that you can't understand it (it's just numbers). It's impossible to say whether it's actually stored like this or if they encrypt it before they provide the archive to you. Meta data is almost impossible to legislate against, and as far as I can see, is entirely legal to collect and use as you see fit. How many people in the world are on hackernews, named "lopis", use Firefox 65, have an IP address in $country, use this screen resolution etc etc Easy enough to identify who you are.
    - hyperman1 6y ago
      AFAIK the GDPR already does this: See first definition of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN#d1e1489-1-1 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 differences here.
      - cj 6y ago
        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 AI was only possible by correlating individuals granularity enough. I’m almost certain the answer is yes. I’m not clear on whether GDPR addresses that issue or not.
        6y ago
  - kace91 6y ago
    My gdpr requests have usually included inferred data. I'm not sure if it was facebook or tinder's that showed a giant list of categories they thought I fitted in, which was btw hilariously wrong (I'm a 30 y/o single male and I was categorised as a single mom, for example).
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
You'd have to go to the specific Google service that stores the item you want to delete. You can delete emails in Gmail, photos in Google Photos, etc.
- aboringusername 6y ago
  This is the wrong answer. Right answer: You can go to [1] and [2] and [3] and ask them to delete your information. It's important to retain a copy in writing that they have removed your information. If a copy is ever found online (in a data breach or otherwise) you would be able to enact legal rights as a result of their GDPR breach. I would encourage people who upload data to leave "fingerprints" in their accounts, such as certain photos, emails, and other data that you have ONLY created on this service (for example, email your own gmail account a unique email, if it's ever leaked, you know where it came from). It's the same way Spotify's GDPR tool does NOT give you all the information they store, yet if you ask via their DPO (usually privacy@) you get a lot more data, rather sneaky way of hiding their true data collection. ALWAYS use email or a physical letter, ALWAYS get a reply by the organization when enacting your GDPR rights, your lawyer/legal authority will be very thankful ;) AND NEVER EVER USE AUTOMATED TOOLS! The chances are, there is data that isn't included within them. For example, go ahead right this second and submit a SAR for "technical log information" to Google, this data is NOT included in their official tools and you will be amazed how much they're storing!! [1]: https://support.google.com/policies/answer/9581826?hl=en https://support.google.com/policies/answer/9581826?hl=en [2]: https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar [3]: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?p=privpol_remove https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?p=pr...
  - H8crilA 6y ago
    RE [2]: You mean "About which Google product" -> "Other", "What personal data are you seeking?" -> "technical log information" ?
yoaviram 6y ago
https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/google.com 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.
- thatsnotmepls 6y ago
  > 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"
- cromantic 6y ago
  Options are GDPR which applies to European Union residents and CCPA which applies to Californians. Is there anything for people within the US who are residents of the other 49 states?

dusted 6y ago

Does this export the youtube video files as well?

izacus 6y ago
I think you need to go directly to YouTube for that - tap your avatar on YouTube, choose "Your Data in YouTube" and there's the option.
flemhans 6y ago
Yes. The original files even (I got a WMV file out)
bobbob1921 6y ago
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.

rathish_g 6y ago

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 and trips. - tried to use 2gb zip to split the files. We have to click and download 100+ pieces of zip files. Even if one file is corrupt we are done. All this shows in a modal window. We can't download more than 5-8 files at a time. - split it into 5gb zip files. Now download numbers are manageable, but the network keeps dropping and we have to download again. We can only retry 3 times making the entire set useless. - no options to separate videos and photos. - we only have a week to takeout and test the whole thing. TLDR; it's designed to make sure that we don't actually take out the files...

londons_explore 6y ago
You can takeout each service seperately...
imgabe 6y ago
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.
- acdha 6y ago
  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.

buildbot 6y ago

Has anyone had any luck using takeout for 10tb plus accounts?

rmkrmk 6y ago
I get export errors with about 250gb in Google
- buildbot 6y ago
  Matches with me experience, the only effective way I've ever managed to export my drive is via FUSE mount systems :/
  - itakealotfoto 6y ago
    Hey, I have about 17tb of data. Is it even worth doing takeout? Are there any programmers out there who might wanna take on directly transferring this data to a Google one unlimited account? I have seen some third party companies. But I just don’t trust them. I need someone who will write a script to run a download and upload offsite where there is a fat pipeline and instant data transfer.

MertsA 6y ago

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 contact data. Bit of an enlightening experience as to just how widespread your personal data is being shared, even if you're somewhat careful of who you give your personal data to.

singron 6y ago
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.
- Closi 6y ago
  Well that clearly sounds like it's not GDPR compliant, but Facebook might have a different policy for the EU.
  - lmkg 6y ago
    Facebook is currently involved in multiple legal battles in Europe about the GDPR, including at least one where it's the instigator. Facebook has different views about what's allowed under the GDPR compared to the people in charge of enforcing the GDPR.
dalbasal 6y ago
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.
- pletsch 6y ago

mark_l_watson 6y ago

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.

wombat-man 6y ago
Huh, i was thinking I’d do something similar but upload the file to maybe s3 glacier storage in aws.
Clampower 6y ago
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?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  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/ https://blog.friendsplus.me/) still proved very useful, and gave capabilities missing from Google's offerings. Dealing with data exports remains challenging.
- tristanperry 6y ago
  I did this 2 days ago, it's the exact same. I used a simple one-liner find/mv command to move all JPGs into the same folder... which made it more decent.
texasbigdata 6y ago
Do you do this to time stamp changes using a sort of differential technique? Or just for non-reliance on Google.
tambeb 6y ago

QueensGambit 6y ago

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.

Rygian 6y ago
I would go further and say "see if their export tool is easy to use and actually works".

solinent 6y ago

I just deleted it all, it was easier, now I just keep it all on my machine. No more takeout--home cooked meals. I can see why it doesn't appeal to all though.

choward 6y ago
I hope you have an encrypted off-site backup somewhere.
- solinent 6y ago
  I wasn't using Google for anything significant so it was pretty easy to delete it. If I care about a picture I'll print it and keep it in a book, I would never trust a corp that's only been in the data business for 10-15 years, especially one known for stealing your information for advertiser's gain.
  - choward 6y ago
    You don't have to "trust" them. In fact you shouldn't. That's why you encrypt locally first. And if they lose your data you still have it locally. It is good to also have two local copies.

duxup 6y ago

I have this run every few months and then download and backup the archive. I like to think it will be helpful in case of the dreaded 'locked out of google for no reason and no recourse' situation.

robotnikman 6y ago
Would be nice if there was a way to automate the process.
- duxup 6y ago
  Agreed. It does allow you to send the takeouts regularly to google drive, but the amount of data I have is too much for that / fills my drive.

ir77 6y ago

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 pictures and i would have one picture with the same name that was something like 24KB and another one with 1.2MB, etc. if it wasn't for the option (which they took away) of syncing photos to your google drive and copying them out that way, i have no idea what i'd have done, i'd have lost about 120GB of photos and videos going back to 2008. so seriously, do all of you just use the takeout and store it away without actually opening up and trying to use it?

OskarS 6y ago
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.
dawnerd 6y ago
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.
axaxs 6y ago
As I wrote elsewhere, previously. I agree it's a mess, but not the end of the world. Extract the file -not- preserving directory structure(-j flag). Now you just have everything in a single folder. Then delete the metadata files by file extension. This took all of a few seconds to do for each zip.
pydry 6y ago
I think people love the idea of takeout more than the thing itself.
rpdillon 6y ago
I just finished found through the takeout process for photos last night. 39 2GB archives. Request took a couple of days to process, then I got an email with a bunch of links that they said were good for 7 days. I planned to load them into my Synology download manager, but the takeout system seems to rely heavily on browser state, so Synology couldn't download them. Each took 5 minutes to download at home over WiFi, and the takeout interface demands authentication every 10 minutes. It also reloads the page and reset my position in the download list on every click. I've uploaded and expanded about half the archives on my Synology, and it's currently indexing everything, so I can't comment on the photo issues you've mentioned quite yet. Overall, I'm happy there exists a mechanism to get my photos, but the quality of the experience is truly awful.

raldi 6y ago

Google Takeout is a great solution to the problem of, how do we get Google programmers, without protest, to write functionality into their services to allow Big Brother to acquire a neat and tidy copy of all a user’s data?

scrollaway 6y ago
... what. You're complaining about the one way google users have to reclaim data that is rightfully theirs? You know that if "big brother" wants data, big brother gets backdoors, not polite export requests?
- raldi 6y ago
  I’m not complaining. I’m marveling at the clever solution to the problem of, “How do we get hundreds of product teams to support our legal obligations without feeling morally conflicted?”
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    What you're saying makes absolutely no sense and doesn't pass Occam's razor. Please back it with some semblance of reasoning at least.
    - raldi 6y ago
      Could you elaborate on that? Do you disagree that Google Takeout is used for government user-data requests, or that absent such functionality, programmers tend to balk at implementing such requests?
      - scrollaway 6y ago
        Google takeout is an inefficient tool for government requests, yes. I'm sure it may get used but I highly doubt it's a primary tool in any way. PRISM revealed how much custom tooling is made specifically for governments and for giving back data to them, automatically addressing their requests etc. Takeout is slow, bulky, and its audience is the end user.

LoveMortuus 6y ago

This is actually kinda fun! I have ~17.8GB, so I guess I'm on the lower end, at least as far as what I've seen in these comments!

rasz 6y ago

I was never able to takeout my YT comments. There is no place to report bugs, complain, or ask for help actual human beings working for Google.

steviedotboston 6y ago

I used this recently to take my music out of Google Play Music and import into iTunes. The downloads were pretty slow, but it worked fine!

yurishimo 6y ago
Same. Do you know a good way to add meta data to songs? I’ve been carrying around a library since I was a teenager and I when I moved it from Google Play to iTunes, a bunch of the meta data was missing.
- steviedotboston 6y ago
  Hmm, I didn't notice any missing metadata.

ThomasGalan 6y ago

HomeAdvisor's CEO is Brandon William Ridenour and his home address is 211 S Cherry St, Denver, CO 80246 and his phone number is (732) 259-8929. Brandon Ridenour's wife's name is Debora Silva Ridenour and her email address is deb_silva007@yahoo.com. Brandon Ridenour and Deb Ridenour also own 730 N Magnolia St, Denver, CO 80220. Their children go to Graland Country Day School located at 55 Clermon St, Denver, CO 80220. The Chairman of IAC and HomeAdvisor is Barry Diller and his home address is 1940 Coldwater Canyon Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. All that information was kindly provided by their colleagues. HomeAdvisor are the biggest scammers in US history and need to be shut down. HomeAdvisor are spamming the internet and search engines with hundreds of fake websites to manipulate consumers and manipulate search engine results. Some examples of HomeAdvisor's hundreds of fake websites are home-siding-contractors.com, 1800contractor.com, handymanservice.com, jensonbrothers.com, starsproservices.com, and powellandsons.com. The construction industry and local economies are being ruined by these bombardment of scams, lies, and deceit from HomeAdvisor and it will only get much worse if nothing is done to stop them. Sometimes as much as over three-fourths of the 1st page search results are all HomeAdvisor and HomeAdvisor's fake websites, which makes it extremely unfair for construction businesses and independent contractors. Often all 3 ads on the 1st page search results are homeadvisor.com, jensonbrothers.com, and powellandsons.com, all 3 of which are websites controlled by HomeAdvisor and is blatant gross anticompetitive manipulation. HomeAdvisor are also writing thousands of fake reviews of their competitors and of themselves. HomeAdvisor are also writing thousands of fake positive reviews of themselves on ConsumerAffairs, Google, the App Store, and Google Play. HomeAdvisor is the worst rated company on the BBB in history with over 2,000 bad reviews from the last 3 years and a horrible average 1 star out of 5 stars rating as of the beginning of the year 2020, but starting the summer of 2020 HomeAdvisor has also begun to write hundreds of fake positive reviews of themselves on the BBB and on ResellerRatings to cheat and alter their ratings. HomeAdvisor is by far the most unethical, unfair, dishonest, and malicious corporation in America. HomeAdvisor uses every scam and dirty trick they can think of. Brandon Ridenour, Deb Ridenour, and the rest of the people behind HomeAdvisor need to be at the very least sentenced to life in prison. Angry contractors, let HomeAdvisor's CEO know that HomeAdvisor will not be tolerated.

kfrzcode 6y ago

I've used Takeout. Nice for them to provide a bundle. That said, I'd love the option to export my Messages content, and that's something I haven't seen anywhere. Has anyone successfully done this for Google Messages? I don't mean backing up to Google Drive, I mean a full-on export.

slhck 6y ago

Well, this works just great: https://i.imgur.com/PZEnuDM.jpg https://i.imgur.com/PZEnuDM.jpg There's a product called "null" without an icon.

tomcam 6y ago

It does not seem to include Gmail. Am I correct, or did I miss some kind of option?

pxeboot 6y ago
I used Takeout to export from Gmail last month. It was listed alongside all the other services.

usr1106 6y ago

I don't use Google a lot, but I have an actively used gmail account. I never give its address to anyone and all incoming mail is forwarded from other addresses. I don't send any mail from that account either. I am somewhat worried that their great algorithms will one day decide it's there is some violation of their ToS and close the account. I had that issue even with a paid (well, voucher that came with a PC, but still) Microsoft Drive account, I used in an atypical way (no sharing, all contents encrypted). In the past I used IMAP for backing up my messages, but over time my scripts to do so have fallen into disrepair... Whether takeout would be a way to do somewhat regular backups? Or might that trigger their algorithms, that you are not a good customer? Has anybody read the ToS whether anything is mentioned about takeout?

harshitaneja 6y ago

Even though I love using Google services, account being blocked and losing access to everything from domains to personal photos and all important docs in drive is a concern that is haunting me since seeing an uptick in these stories. Maybe it is that I am observing them more but in any case reducing Google dependence and having a strategy for account block scenario has become a need due to the large impact it would have on my life in the current scenario. I really wish google takeout had an API to request takeouts at weekly or whatever works, instead of the bimonthly (once in 2 months) option currently offered. Then one could keep data in Google services and not have serious concerns as at most the loss would be of a week's worth of data. Also on this note- does anyone have any recommendations for domain registrars? I cannot continue to have my domains on Google even though it has a great UX.

mderazon 6y ago

"You have Advanced Protection switched on, which means that it could take days or even weeks for your files to be ready to download, but we'll email you when they're ready."