Google Takeout update could make transferring photos to iCloud a breeze
Next year, Takeout will play nicer with third-party platforms
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Starting next year,Googlewill be making it easier to transfer your user information to third-party services using its Takeout export tool.
This update comes at the tail end of an investigation by the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM), a market competition regulator. In total, there will bethree new changes made to Google’s service. Although we don’t know exactly what the changes will be, the AGCM does mention a few things. Two of them will be “supplementary solutions” to Google Takeout, giving people a way to export their information to “third-party operators.” The third “commitment”, as it’s referred to, will “allow direct data portability from service to service.” That last one specifically relates to moving data generated from a person’s Google Search history andYouTube.
To give some backstory, back in 2022 theAGCM alleged Googlehad been abusing its dominant position in the tech industry to collect “large amounts of [user] data” and putting up “obstacles to interoperability” in sharing information with third parties. One of the complaints said Takeout was “extremely complicated” to use – something they claim was by design as it “discourages [people] from porting their data elsewhere.” In response, Google proposed the three features that we mentioned earlier as changes it could make to appease regulators; all of which the Authority accepted.
Expanding data portability
Regarding the direct data portability feature,9to5Googlestates it sounds a lot like the Data Transfer Initiative (formerly known as the Data Transfer Project). If you don’t know what that is, theData Transfer Initiativeconsists ofApple, Meta, and Google coming together to expand data portability to users. The classic example, as given by 9to5Google, is imagine being able to transfer images fromGoogle PhotostoiCloudwithout having to manually do anything. The companies handle all the heavy lifting. This could preserve precious bandwidth while also being much faster than downloading gigabytes of content.
It’s unknown exactly when everything in the Google Takeout update will be released, but we won’t have to wait long for the direct data portability tool. The tech giant told the Authority the feature will officially launch sometime during “the first quarter of 2024.” However, we might see it even sooner as third-party platforms can test an early version of the tool “six months before its actual release.” Possibly by October, at the earliest.
If you don’t want to wait until next year for the Google Takeout upgrade, check out TechRadar’slist of the best data migration tools for 2023.
Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
Cesar Cadenas has been writing about the tech industry for several years now specializing in consumer electronics, entertainment devices, Windows, and the gaming industry. But he’s also passionate about smartphones, GPUs, and cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is business survival and CISOs need to act now
The real battle for generative AI in software
HPE reveals critical security bug affecting networking access points
