Google making it easier to leave its cloud

Google went public with its Data Liberation Front project yesterday, which represented the company's commitment against user lock-in. According to its FAQ, the Data Liberation Front is an in-house engineering team that was first conceived in 2006, and set up in 2007.

The idea is that users can be locked into a cloud environment due to the difficulty of moving data out. Hence, the Data Liberation Front is working not only to make it possible to migrate to other services, but to do so as fast as possible--and at no additional cost.

The team's mission reflects that, and is echoed in red on the front page: "Users own the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to give users greater control by making it easier for them to move data in and out." At the moment, not all of Google's applications meet the criteria though, you can check out the status of individual projects from the site.

While there is no doubt that Google is leveraging on the announcement as a PR move to reinforce its "open" nature, the news is nevertheless welcomed. On a practical front, it should serve to reassure users who were deterred from experimenting with Cloud-hosted applications--at least those from Google--due to fear of data lock-in.

For more on this story:
- check out the Data Liberation Front site
- check out this article at Ars Technica

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