Google, Microsoft's ambitious plan will help users move data easily

Technology giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter have all joined forces with a new open source project called "Data Transfer Project", which will allow users to easily transfer their data between services without losing any information.Google, in a blog post, described it as a system that would "transfer data directly from one service to another, without the need for it." download and reimport it. "

Currently, the code is available on GitHub and a white paper describing its Scope The system now supports the transfer of bones, mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks that leverage existing Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Remember the Milk, and SmugMug APIs.

In addition to interoperability, another great feature of the project is its data confidentiality. When The Verge ran through the code, they found that engineers built a system to encrypt data in transit, issuing forward-secret keys for each transaction. In simple terms, the data contains a high level of encryption, making hacking difficult, which should attract users who care about their privacy.

So far, most of the work has been done by engineers from Google and Microsoft. , who have long since tried to solve the problem of data transfer

"When people have data, they want to be able to move them from one product to the other, and they can not." a problem that we can not solve alone, "said Greg Fair, product manager at Google Takeout

The platforms already offer a solution for downloading data, but transferring them between services is often a break-even major head because each service has its own set of protocols.If the system becomes an open standard as expected, this will no longer be the case.

For consumers, this means that Facebook photos are just pictures that can be moved to another social networking site with the same metadata, and Spotify users could also, in theory, transfer their music playlists to Apple Music or any other service of their choice. easily place emails, calendars and contacts without having to worry about starting over.

Now, if only Apple joined the project, it would make it truly universal!