Google users who tend to be nostalgic when it comes to old emails and those who save memorable dates can do so now with their Gmail and Google Calendar accounts. The search giant announced Thursday that users can export their data in order to save them as backup or use them on other similar services.
The new feature is now available for Google Calendar and is expected to complete its roll out to Gmail users next month.
"Having access to your data and being able to take it with you is important, especially if that data contains precious memories like old love letters, your first job offer, or that 100-message thread discussing the merits of various cat videos," wrote Google software engineer Nick Piepmeier on the official Gmail blog.
"You can download all of your mail and calendars or choose a subset of labels and calendars. You can also download a single archive file for multiple products with a copy of your Gmail, Calendar, Google+, YouTube, Drive, and other Google data," he added.
The Gmail data comes in MBOX format that will be compatible with Apple's Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Microsoft Outlook 2011. The Calendar file will be available in the iCalender format.
Google has been allowing users to download their data from several of its services in the several categories such as Home and Office (Contacts, Drive, and Voice); Social ( Profile, Hangouts, Blogger, +1s on Google+, Google+ Circles); Media (YouTube, Google+ Photos); and Location History.
Data portability is crucial for Internet users who want to move their information and uploaded content from one service or product to another. Google has devoted a team through the Data Liberation Front established in 2007 to help users export their data from various Google products.
The Data Liberation Front's FAQ section reveals why the group exists.
"We started looking at our products and discovered that while the door to leave wasn't locked, in some cases it was a bit "stuck" and we thought that we could do better," the FAQ stated.
The team also disclosed that it was inspired by what former CEO and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said before.
"How do you be big without being evil? We don't trap end users. So if you don't like Google, if for whatever reason we do a bad job for you, we make it easy for you to move to our competitor," the team quoted Schmidt.
