Google Has All My Data – How Do I Back It Up? 215
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?"
P.T. Barnum (Score:1, Insightful)
>>Bit by bit with their mantra, hip image and brilliant services.
There's a sucker born every minute.
why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)
google's redundancy is legendary. why bother?
i can see if they maybe canceled a service or somesuch, but that's highly unlikely, especially for their more popular stuff. (spreadsheets, email, pictures)
i can understand the urge to keep it all local, but with their diversity, it's much more safe in their "cloud" than it would be at my house...
Re:Uh, Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
And BTW, web apps != "the cloud".
Huh? Google web apps, at the very least, can be considered "the cloud", unless you are arguing that the term "cloud computing" has no meaning.
Back away, slowly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Use the Google services only where necessary. We've been doing this for a company I've started, but we only put documents and information on Google's services while we need it there. Not only is all our data on our backup server, but we only put data on their servers while it's needed. Visiting customer sites, etc.
In addition, isn't this the kind of thing that makes laptops so great? Bring it with you! There are tons of sharing apps about for various uses. Use a VPN and sshfs for remote file access. Use iCal/whatever to sync with your google calendar. That sort of thing.
In short, slowly migrate to a safer solution you're in more control of. You may lose a bit of your convenience, but safe data is worth it, in my opinion.
Re:why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
PEBKAC (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:stupid question (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Ask Slashdot Troll ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:why back up (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Uh, Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Easy! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Just a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What does Google owe you? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does Google owe any level of data integrity and privacy? Do they owe return of user data without claiming rights to use it otherwise? Do they make any promise of data protection and disaster recovery? What due diligence does the use owe in the process?
As we move to an environment where more and more people simply 'trust" corporations to hold and protect their (potentially personal) data, I fear that we're way ahead of the law in defining the rights and responsibilities of both users and providers. In the absence of law, providers, such as Google, will write naturally terms of use that mostly benefit themselves. Users will simply lose.
Re:Easy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah I mean that as a joke (since a lot of people here think Apple is as evil as Google).
Any sane person using Leopard will also have Time Machine enabled, on an external hard drive, meaning a local and external backup for most people, and three backups for those also using MobileMe.
You're right, using a Mac as an example was the worst possible choice.
Re:What does Google owe you? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
Re:why back up (Score:1, Insightful)
So... what you're saying is that it's permanently deleted then. Or, does "can't get it back no matter how much I beg" mean something else where you're from?
Re:Not sure about one-touch... (Score:3, Insightful)
You appear to have linked to yet another Google technology which is used internally, which they've open sourced because they've found it useful.
It's no more relevant to this discussion than what filesystem they're using. (And, for the record, they rolled their own FS anyway.)
Remember: I said "support open standards". I didn't say "exclusively uses open standards for everything, including stuff the public was never meant to see."
Are you running on OpenFirmware? Have you flashed your BIOS with Coreboot?
No? Then how is Google any worse? I'd call this better -- at least they've given us some source to play with. I still wish Apple would give me the firmware to my fucking keyboard.