How does the data transfer project of Google, Facebook and Microsoft work?

With the increase of cloud storage, there is an endless number of ways to save photos, music, documents or any other way. what else off site. Unfortunately, if you want to transfer this data from one service to another, the process can be quite tedious, because you will probably have to download everything and then manually download all those files into a new home on someone's server. Another one. To simplify and streamline the process of transferring your data, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook have partnered to create the Data Transfer Project, an open-source data portability platform designed for your valuable files a little less painful.

While the DTP is still in progress and according to the website "is not yet ready to be used by everyone", the code to move your data is available on GitHub and can be used to transfer data providers, including the big four above with Flickr, SmugMug, Instagram (which belongs to Facebook), and Remember the Milk.

However, for everything to work well now, you'll have to be more than a little technician. You must obtain your own API keys from the services you want to use, and also run the DTP demo server locally on your machine.

But once the DTP has been developed, it can facilitate the transfer of your data by allowing you to directly transfer encrypted files from Microsoft OneDrive to Google Drive without having to download them to your phone or computer.

Currently, there are services like Google Takeout and others that allow you to upload your data from a business, and thanks to GDPR, Europe now requires all online storage services to provide tools that allow users to download their data. In the future, according to comments made by Greg Fair, the Google Verge manager, the real challenge for DTP will be to attract enough other cloud storage companies. In the long run, we want there to be a consortium of industry leaders, consumer groups, government groups, but until we have a reasonable critical mass, that is Is not an interesting conversation, "said Fair

. the group will have to find a way to attract aboard other major players like Amazon, Apple, Dropbox, Mega and others, which could be more difficult than it may seem, because by facilitating Data transfer makes it easier to abandon one storage provider for another, which could quickly end up in the original service's user base.

This could have serious implications for small storage providers, because if the DTP facilitates the start, many users could appeal to one of the technology giants, thus consolidating their position at the top. And in light of the EU's recent $ 5 billion anti-trust fine against Google, DTP could also be seen as a preventative way to deter regulators in the future from considering Google Drive as something that makes the cloud storage market less competitive. The data transfer project seems like a good idea for consumers, but there is still a lot of work to be done before we can take into account the promise of easily moving data from your cloud to your heart's content.