7 ms·

Thank you, Google. Glad to hear that the Data Liberation Front is alive and well: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/ From 2006: "We

by ISL 13y ago

Thank you, Google. Glad to hear that the Data Liberation Front is alive and well: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/ From 2006: "We would never trap user data," he [Schmidt] said. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-we-would-never-trap-user-data/3902 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-we-wou...

lukasm 13y ago
I have ambivalent feelings about this. All in all, this is my stuff.
- jmathai 13y ago
  Agreed but it takes time, effort and money to make sure that you can take your stuff with you.
  - ithkuil 13y ago
    Yes, after all, you already could access your email via imap and do the backup by yourself.
    - bradbatt 13y ago
      My mom couldn't. Nor about 95% of the rest of my friends and family. But clicking export and then download? All of them can do that.
      - Groxx 13y ago
        Really? Every email application I've used in the past few years asks for your name / email address / password on the first wizard-page. They automatically detect gmail, hook everything up, and start downloading without any further steps.
        smithzvk 13y ago
        Yes, to the point that it is very easy to crash Thunderbird if you blindly hook it into your GMail account.
        Groxx 13y ago
        I've never had that problem. I have plenty of other annoyances with Thunderbird (so much that I'm paying for what's essentially a custom UI), but it's usually stable. It hasn't complained when I've hooked up a half-dozen accounts, collectively about a half-million emails, and it did everything reasonably quickly.
        smithzvk 13y ago
        Hmmm... not seeing the same behavior today. There have been upgrades in the meantime, of course, but I doubt that this was addressed. Must have been something off that day. It did run off and start downloading the header of every single message in my GMail account, which I would rather it didn't as I really only care about the mail that I have received recently (I only use Thunderbird for encrypted emails but the web interface otherwise). That is still annoying, but since I don't want to bad mouth people with false information: Let the record show that Thunderbird no longer becomes unresponsive for me when accessing my GMail account, must have been a glitch on that day when I first set up GMail in Thunderbird.
        Groxx 13y ago
        haha, I don't mean to imply that it's impossible that it did that, just that it shouldn't be normal :) usually bugs like that are fixed pretty quickly, especially for something as widely-used as gmail.
      - ithkuil 13y ago
        That's exactly why this thing is useful and appreciated.
    - tedunangst 13y ago
      Until you get the "lockdown in sector 4" error message and have to sit in the timeout corner to start again. It took me over 48 hours to actually download all my mail out of gmail. (about two years ago.)
    - outworlder 13y ago
      Have you actually tried? There is throttling in place, meaning it can take ages depending on your account size.
- resu_nimda 13y ago
  To play devil's advocate - you willingly gave it to them, with almost zero contractual expectations. In a technical sense it is their stuff, and they have graciously implemented a feature allowing you to retrieve a copy of it. I definitely agree that it's the "right" thing to do, but this kind of comment speaks of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility. They're offering a service, they don't have any inherent obligation, and you can choose not to use it.
  - fragsworth 13y ago
    Absolutely not. The implicit agreement is that they provide a service to hold, manage, and use your stuff, and you give up a certain amount of privacy by allowing them to see it - and they get to advertise at you while you use the service, and maybe make money in other ways off your information. So in other words, it really is your stuff. Imagine if they locked your accounts from you out of malice - it's legal gray area, since I don't believe there have been any court cases, but I'm pretty sure the result would be obvious. You would easily be able to sue them to get back your access to it.
    - resu_nimda 13y ago
      Why would you have the expectation of an implicit agreement? There is no implicit agreement, that's an unfounded assumption by the user. I imagine they could completely shut down all unpaid gmail access at any moment with no legal implications (though I haven't read the fine print, and in that extreme case the courts would probably step in just to keep the country running smoothly). What precedent is there to support your hypothetical lawsuit? I kind of disagree, they would just get a lot of negative PR.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        If Google simply shut down Gmail, their stockholders would pretty much fire the entire leadership of the company. It would be professional suicide to approve something like that.
        13y ago
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
"We would never trap user data" No, we just use a different definition of "user data" than most privacy and civil rights laws. Or can I soon expect to be able to download all the data anything from Google+ buttons, YouTube to Doubleclick ads have gathered on me?
- IanCal 13y ago
  I think this is fairly obvious but there's a clear difference between "data belonging to a user" and "data about a user". The first is what they are talking about, because this is how vendor lock-in occurs.
  - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
    Yes, there is a difference, absolutely. No, the line between the two categories is not clear at all.
    - IanCal 13y ago
      Can you give me an example of an ambiguous case? I can't think of any personally.
      - JW_00000 13y ago
        Well, the URLs I enter in Chrome for example: is that data belonging to me because I entered it, or is it data about me because they track it? Or even the connections I have on Google+: is it data belonging to me because I entered it?
        IanCal 13y ago
        You're not really handing over URLs to google saying "here are some urls, please keep them", are you? Bookmarks, yes, and you can easily export them. > Or even the connections I have on Google+: is it data belonging to me because I entered it? Yes. Google takeout lets you download your G+ circles, if that helps.
bound008 13y ago
I am glad they did this, as a user who already left the big G earlier this year. Its wasn't a big priority though because of IMAP and ICS. I already got my data out. If anything, I hope this helps promote the MBOX format for quickly moving mail around vs. error prone IMAP transitions.
- bad_user 13y ago
  It's pretty cool do download an archive though, instead of going through IMAP, for archival purposes that is. I have a lot of email in my GMail, going back to 2005 I think. I'm afraid of accidentally deleting it, plus I also use other email clients, like Thunderbird and I'm always triple-checking settings to ensure it doesn't delete old emails. Having the option of doing a dump from time to time, for storage, is really cool.
  - jlgaddis 13y ago
    Check out "offlineimap" (or similar utilities) that sync your Gmail to your local machine over IMAP. Run that via cron and can back up your mail like normal. http://offlineimap.org/ http://offlineimap.org/

by ISL 13y ago

lukasm 13y ago

I have ambivalent feelings about this. All in all, this is my stuff.

jmathai 13y ago
Agreed but it takes time, effort and money to make sure that you can take your stuff with you.
- ithkuil 13y ago
  Yes, after all, you already could access your email via imap and do the backup by yourself.
  - bradbatt 13y ago
    My mom couldn't. Nor about 95% of the rest of my friends and family. But clicking export and then download? All of them can do that.
    - Groxx 13y ago
      Really? Every email application I've used in the past few years asks for your name / email address / password on the first wizard-page. They automatically detect gmail, hook everything up, and start downloading without any further steps.
      - smithzvk 13y ago
        Yes, to the point that it is very easy to crash Thunderbird if you blindly hook it into your GMail account.
        Groxx 13y ago
        I've never had that problem. I have plenty of other annoyances with Thunderbird (so much that I'm paying for what's essentially a custom UI), but it's usually stable. It hasn't complained when I've hooked up a half-dozen accounts, collectively about a half-million emails, and it did everything reasonably quickly.
        smithzvk 13y ago
        Hmmm... not seeing the same behavior today. There have been upgrades in the meantime, of course, but I doubt that this was addressed. Must have been something off that day. It did run off and start downloading the header of every single message in my GMail account, which I would rather it didn't as I really only care about the mail that I have received recently (I only use Thunderbird for encrypted emails but the web interface otherwise). That is still annoying, but since I don't want to bad mouth people with false information: Let the record show that Thunderbird no longer becomes unresponsive for me when accessing my GMail account, must have been a glitch on that day when I first set up GMail in Thunderbird.
        Groxx 13y ago
        haha, I don't mean to imply that it's impossible that it did that, just that it shouldn't be normal :) usually bugs like that are fixed pretty quickly, especially for something as widely-used as gmail.
    - ithkuil 13y ago
      That's exactly why this thing is useful and appreciated.
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    Until you get the "lockdown in sector 4" error message and have to sit in the timeout corner to start again. It took me over 48 hours to actually download all my mail out of gmail. (about two years ago.)
  - outworlder 13y ago
    Have you actually tried? There is throttling in place, meaning it can take ages depending on your account size.
resu_nimda 13y ago
To play devil's advocate - you willingly gave it to them, with almost zero contractual expectations. In a technical sense it is their stuff, and they have graciously implemented a feature allowing you to retrieve a copy of it. I definitely agree that it's the "right" thing to do, but this kind of comment speaks of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility. They're offering a service, they don't have any inherent obligation, and you can choose not to use it.
- fragsworth 13y ago
  Absolutely not. The implicit agreement is that they provide a service to hold, manage, and use your stuff, and you give up a certain amount of privacy by allowing them to see it - and they get to advertise at you while you use the service, and maybe make money in other ways off your information. So in other words, it really is your stuff. Imagine if they locked your accounts from you out of malice - it's legal gray area, since I don't believe there have been any court cases, but I'm pretty sure the result would be obvious. You would easily be able to sue them to get back your access to it.
  - resu_nimda 13y ago
    Why would you have the expectation of an implicit agreement? There is no implicit agreement, that's an unfounded assumption by the user. I imagine they could completely shut down all unpaid gmail access at any moment with no legal implications (though I haven't read the fine print, and in that extreme case the courts would probably step in just to keep the country running smoothly). What precedent is there to support your hypothetical lawsuit? I kind of disagree, they would just get a lot of negative PR.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      If Google simply shut down Gmail, their stockholders would pretty much fire the entire leadership of the company. It would be professional suicide to approve something like that.
      - 13y ago

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

"We would never trap user data" No, we just use a different definition of "user data" than most privacy and civil rights laws. Or can I soon expect to be able to download all the data anything from Google+ buttons, YouTube to Doubleclick ads have gathered on me?

IanCal 13y ago
I think this is fairly obvious but there's a clear difference between "data belonging to a user" and "data about a user". The first is what they are talking about, because this is how vendor lock-in occurs.
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  Yes, there is a difference, absolutely. No, the line between the two categories is not clear at all.
  - IanCal 13y ago
    Can you give me an example of an ambiguous case? I can't think of any personally.
    - JW_00000 13y ago
      Well, the URLs I enter in Chrome for example: is that data belonging to me because I entered it, or is it data about me because they track it? Or even the connections I have on Google+: is it data belonging to me because I entered it?
      - IanCal 13y ago
        You're not really handing over URLs to google saying "here are some urls, please keep them", are you? Bookmarks, yes, and you can easily export them. > Or even the connections I have on Google+: is it data belonging to me because I entered it? Yes. Google takeout lets you download your G+ circles, if that helps.

bound008 13y ago

I am glad they did this, as a user who already left the big G earlier this year. Its wasn't a big priority though because of IMAP and ICS. I already got my data out. If anything, I hope this helps promote the MBOX format for quickly moving mail around vs. error prone IMAP transitions.

bad_user 13y ago
It's pretty cool do download an archive though, instead of going through IMAP, for archival purposes that is. I have a lot of email in my GMail, going back to 2005 I think. I'm afraid of accidentally deleting it, plus I also use other email clients, like Thunderbird and I'm always triple-checking settings to ensure it doesn't delete old emails. Having the option of doing a dump from time to time, for storage, is really cool.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  Check out "offlineimap" (or similar utilities) that sync your Gmail to your local machine over IMAP. Run that via cron and can back up your mail like normal. http://offlineimap.org/ http://offlineimap.org/