[…] many web-based ser­vices make it dif­fi­cult for you to export your data. Worse, they’ll charge you a fee for the priv­i­lege. Some offer APIs — a bonus if you’re tech­ni­cally astute, but a solu­tion that leaves the aver­age user short on options.

To pre­vent such headaches, Google recently launched the Data Lib­er­a­tion Front, an ini­tia­tive within the com­pany to ensure every one of its prod­ucts has a clear, easy option for users to export their data in bulk and take their busi­ness elsewhere.

Very encour­ag­ing inter­view up on Web­mon­key with Brian Fitz­patrick, a Google engi­neer­ing man­ager who’s lead­ing a team that’s mak­ing sure all the data you give to Google can actu­ally be retrieved and ported to another ser­vice.  (Ok, not all the data…I sus­pect things like dis­cov­er­ing your AdSense will be curi­ously absent since Google prob­a­bly doesn’t con­sider it your data.  Though they do at least let you opt out now.)  The abil­ity to down­load all of your data is great, and I hope that other online ser­vices fol­low suit.  Of course, there are leaks in the sys­tem (the inter­view men­tions that meta­data isn’t quite as easy to export as actual data) but it’s a start.

via Pack Up Your Data and Leave When­ever You Want It s the New Rule of the Cloud — Web­mon­key.