Google pledges $3 mn for Data Transfer Project

New Delhi, March 14 (IANS) Google has announced to provide $3 million over the next five years, as well as hundreds of hours of its engineers' time, for the Data Transfer Project.

In 2018, Google, Facebook (now Meta), Microsoft and Twitter collaborated to announce the Data Transfer Project, which worked on tools to help users "transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it."

The latest funding, said Google, will help expand the open source libraries that facilitate more types of data transfer and allow more companies and organizations to participate in the project.

Data portability can be challenging for people who don't have high-speed internet, unlimited mobile data plans, or who don't have a personal device with extra storage.

"In 2018, we launched the Data Transfer Project (DTP), an open source collaboration with Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter and SmugMug to simplify data portability for people around the world," said the company.

"On average, we see 8.2 million exports per month with Google Takeout and in 2021, more than 400 billion files were exported, which has doubled since 2019," the company informed.

Unlike traditional methods of moving your files from one service to another, which require reliable broadband or drawing on mobile data plans, with the project, people can simply authorise a copy of the data to safely move to a new service without having to download it to a personal device first.

This makes it easier for people to try new services without the burden of needing additional storage.

"We will also continue to improve our own tools, like Google Takeout, including adding new ways to move your files to different services with DTP technology," said Google.