Google Has All My Data – How Do I Back It Up?

shadeshope writes "Slowly but surely Google has taken over my computing life. How can I back it up? Bit by bit with their mantra, hip image and brilliant services, Google has gained my trust and all my data. I am doing almost all of my computing in the cloud. Google Reader, Calender, Email, Docs and Notes have become my tools of choice; even to the point where my day book, research notes, etc., are all on Google's servers. It was just so easy, enabling me to effortlessly work from multiple computers, operating systems and locations. I know, I know, this is foolish — all my eggs are firmly in one basket. It has crept up on me. As a long-time computer user and committed pessimist, I have used many schemes over the years to ensure my data is safe. Now I have ceded all control to Google. How can I regain some control and back this all up? Is there a one-touch solution that will take all my data from the various online apps and archive it on my home server?"

Kill Somebody

Then the gov't will back it all up for you! Easy.

Easy!

Once you get all your data back, buy a Mac, subscribe to MobileMe and be safe, knowing that all your data is in the safe hands of a single compa...

Oh wait.

Re:Easy!

Idunno, Sergey. Ask Larry what he does.

Re:Easy!

Once you get all your data back, buy a Mac, subscribe to MobileMe and be safe, knowing that all your data is in the safe hands of a single compa...

You chose a poor example. Pretty much all the Mobile Me services store the data both on Apple's servers and on the local machine, by default.

I know you meant this as a joke, but your suggestion actually would allow a user to regain control of their data, albeit probably not in the most flexible way.

Re:Easy!

There's also notMac [notmacchallenge.com], which replaces .Mac.

Re:Easy!

I know you meant this as a joke, but your suggestion actually would allow a user to regain control of their data, albeit probably not in the most flexible way.

It might enable them to regain control of their future data. But they have almost certainly lost control of their current data.
About the only way of retaining control over your data whilst having a third party store it would be if you encrypt in such a way that that party will never have access to anything other than the cyphertext. Which has the side effect that you can't process that data with web based apps.

Uh, Google?

Gbackup, of course! Well OK, not yer, but apparently coming soon [wordpress.com]. If you need it now, um, Google is your friend [lifehacker.com]. And there's more, if you check Google [google.com].
And BTW, web apps != "the cloud".

Re:Uh, Google?

"Slowly but surely [Meth] has taken over my [...] life. How can I [get it back]? Bit by bit with [its seductiveness], hip image and brilliant [highs]. [Meth] has gained my trust and all my [money]. I am doing almost all of my [living] in the cloud. [Meth Labs and narco-traffickers] have become my tools of choice. Even to the point where my [home, business] etc are all [Meth labs].It was just so easy, enabling me to effortlessly work from multiple computers, operating systems and locations. I know, I know, this is foolish -- all my eggs are firmly in one [drug]. It has crept up on me. As a long-time [cocaine] user, and committed pessimist, I have used many [drugs] over the years to ensure my [highs] are safe. Now I have ceded all control to [Meth]. How can I regain some control and back this all up? Is there a one-touch solution that will take [] my [life] from the various [drugs] and [recover] it[]?"

Re:Uh, Google?

"How can I regain some control and back this all up?"

I suggest searching [Meth] for answers!

Re:Uh, Google?

unless you are arguing that the term "cloud computing" has no meaning.

Correct, it's an unnecessary buzzword (is that an oxymoron?) to cover something that's existed since the days of mainframes and dumb terminals. You know, that limiting, ancient paradigm that led to the microcomputer revolution because it sucked so bad? :)

Re:Uh, Google?

(is that an oxymoron?)

No, it's needlessly redundant.
Necessarily redundant is an oxymoron.

(And so are many people when burnt.)/jokealert

* shrugs shoulders *

I don't know ... Google it

Not sure about one-touch...

But Google solutions tend to at least support established open standards.

That is: You can archive your Gmail account via IMAP. You can probably download your Google Calendar appointments as an iCal file. While I'm not sure of the best way to automate it, all of your documents in Google Docs are available in OpenDocument.

Still, these are all "some assembly required".

Re:Not sure about one-touch...

But Google solutions tend to at least support established open standards.

That is: You can archive your Gmail account via IMAP.

You might have to rejigger some of your tags to end up with a folder structure in your IMAP archive
Otherwise it'll just be all your mail in one folder.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/nested-folders-in-gmail.html [blogspot.com]
 
/Unless Gmail has changed something since that was written.
//Personally, I don't consider tags a replacement for folders

Not one solution

Thunderbird can back up gmail, and the Zindus extension will back up you address book. Lifehacker had a story in the past month about using wget to backup your del.icio.us bookmarks; I presume it can be adapted to Googlepages and your blog. Finally, if you install Google Gears, a lot of content will be cached on your laptop. I don't know how you'd retrieve it, but at least you'd know where it was.

Re:Not one solution

Here are some mostly self-explanatory links:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ [mozilla.com]
http://www.zindus.com/ [zindus.com]
http://lifehacker.com/software/download-managers/geek-to-live--wget-local-copies-of-your-online-research-delicious-digg-or-google-notebook-200360.php [lifehacker.com]
http://lifehacker.com/399407/how-to-sync-any-desktop-calendar-with-google-calendar [lifehacker.com]
http://gears.google.com/ [google.com]

It's simple!

File -> "Save As..."

Cloud Addiction

As a long-time computer user, and committed pessimist, I'd have hoped you'd think about backups long before you placed all your trust in the cloud.

This is exactly the model that all clouds will eventually mutate into ... once enough people become dependent on the cloud, they will announce it will become a paid service the following week.

Your eggs, Google's basket.

Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!) Erm, you mean you can't detect which it is ???

Ask Slashdot Troll ?

Does This 'Ask Slashdot' have the air of a troll to anyone else? It's like the questioner is serving it up so that every Google-hating/privacy-loving/I-told-you-so'er can go *apeshit* on it.

Just a few thoughts...

First, Google did not 'take over' your life or your data. You willingly gave it to them and, now that you find yourself a bit worried about the implications of one company having all of your data, you are trying to paint them as some sort of evil entity that cajoled and nearly forced you to turn over your data to them.

They didn't.

Take responsibility for your decision to hand over your data. Just because a service or company is cool and sexy doesn't give them any special powers to make you do anything. Google included.

Now, as to backing up your data, I'm not sure what the problem is. Google isn't holding your data hostage at all. With the exception of maybe Notes, you can get your data from Google to your local machine pretty easy:

Email: setup a POP3 client and download all your mail to your machine from GMail.

Documents: Go to FILE->DOWNLOAD AS and export each document to a file on your hard disk.

Reader: Spend some time looking at each feeds URL and bring them into a desktop feed reader.

Calendar: Find a tool (and there are some, I just can't think of the name now) that will allow you to bring Google Calendar data off of the server and into a local app.

The truth is you are not a slave to Google. You can leave anytime you want. That doesn't mean it's not going to take a little work on your end to do so but, then, why shouldn't it? YOU chose to go 100% with Google (as many of us have including me) and it isn't Googles responsibility to make it super simple for you to up and leave.

Re:why bother?

That would work, unless Google itself deletes your account [blogspot.com] or all of your email [techcrunch.com].

Backups are meant to cover more than just hard drive failures, otherwise RAID 1/5 would be sufficient.

Also, if you can't backup your data from Google, you can't switch from Google to anyone else, so you are locked in.

Re:stupid question

What part of Sarbanes-Oxley requires they backup data that has nothing to do with their finances? I think you don't know what you're talking about. SOx is very much misinterpreted, and you're only continuing the trend.

Re:stupid question

The only data S-O requires Google to back up is their own financial data. They have no legal obligation whatsoever to the users of their free services. They could delete all of the OP's data right now for any reason or none and he would have no recourse.

Re:why back up

Google does NOT have your backups. They have redundancy in their data storage, but when their servers get the command to delete something, it gets deleted everywhere, permanently!

See their own faq: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50208 [google.com]

Re:What does Google owe you?

> In the absence of law, providers, such as Google, will write naturally terms of use that
> mostly benefit themselves.

Real providers with whom you have a contract are obligated by law to do whatever the contract says they have to do (assuming that you hold up your end by paying the bill). Advertising agencies such as Google that provide free services for promotional purposes have no legal obligations to their "users" whatever. Nor should they.