Take a Copy of All Your Data With Google Takeout

We've mentioned this a few times recently in conjunction with Google shutting down their Reader service, but for those of you who weren't aware, Google offers a service called Google Takeout which allows you to download all your data from every Google service you're using. It's very easy to use: just head to Google Takeout, choose which (or all) services you want to archive, and let it go. Depending on how much data you have it may take a little while, but once it's finished you can download the archive of all your data and use it however you please. 

Your completed archive comes down to your computer as a Zip file (it's easiest to do this from your Mac, not your iOS device), and each services' data is contained in a separate folder within the archive. Individual data is stored in standard formats: Word and Excel files for Google Drive data, MP3s for your Google Voicemails, JPGs for your pictures, and so on, all making it very transportable to whatever service or application you wish to use to manage the data going forward.

Google Takeout In Action Archiving My Data

Of course, as much as we like to moan about how dangerous Google is with all of our data, we have yet to find anything that offers all this functionality for free anywhere else, so... sometimes it's just nice to use Google Takeout as an archive and not as the final step in leaving their services. And that's OK, too. As we always say, it's imperative to have multiple copies of any important data, for if you only have one copy, that's as good as having none. Take a minute and Takeout your Google data today.