Google Takeout and the Microsoft Equivalent

Personal data is becoming an ever-present concern in our lives – Entire companies are based around the business model of giving their services for free, to then sell your data to others. Data gathering and data sharing is so prevalent that we never even think about it anymore. In fact, a lot of this data collecting is a boon to our lives, instead of a hindrance, but it’s still something we should be aware of. It’s much more than just having companies watching. A large majority of users also store their own data in the cloud for easy access or sync, whether its Google Drive or OneDrive or Dropbox, or a cloud-based email provider such as Microsoft or Google, or even iCloud.

Google, however, is very open about the fact they’re tracking your information. Google is known for it, and they make it easy for you to see what they have. The tech giant has a function called Google Takeout, which allows you to download a copy of all the data Google has gathered for you. They’ll package it in a nice, downloadable file. The information includes phone-location tracking for my Android, Google Chrome configuration data, Contacts and Calendars, blog posts, and more. There are around 50 different categories of data Google offers, and Google Takeout lets you sort it out and look it over.

Google Takeout is a useful function for creating backups of your online data, if you’re worried about data corruption or malware threats to your Google-based life. It can also be used to transfer contact or calendar information to a different account, or to keep an eye on what Google is tracking for you. Google Takeout also offers a convenient way for you to export your Google Chrome bookmarks to a new browser, or even to bulk-download your photos for your personal review.

Because of the sheer volume of data that Google has, unless you’re explicitly trying to backup everything, we would recommend starting Google Takeout by un-selecting everything, then explicitly re-selecting the specific categories that interest you. When you start the process of a Takeout, Google creates an online archive for you, that will take some time to prepare – anywhere from a few minutes to a number of hours, based on how much data Google has for you and how much you asked for. After the archive is prepared you have a week of access before the Takeout is removed once again.

For people who don’t use Google applications as much, there are a number of other services that offer similar services, including Microsoft – though Microsoft’s services are more compartmentalized; OneDrive, Teams, Microsoft 365, and your regular Microsoft Accounts all have different download archives. Even Apple offers a chance to download the data they’ve stored, as does Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and other cloud-based social and marketing services. While some of these services make it easier to use than others, the simplicity of the Google Takeout is refreshing.

Microsoft doesn’t seem to track as much raw data about your computer life as other companies, and it keeps the Microsoft Account data separate from the OneDrive data, and separate from the Microsoft 365 data. OneDrive allows you to download the stored files to a local location, which is a good way to backup copies of your data; Microsoft 365 keeps track of email, contacts, and calendar, as well as the related things (tasks, reminders, appointments), and it conveniently allows you to export your information from the Outlook application, the Outlook.com website, and the Microsoft 365 site, depending on what you’re trying to export.

Overall, in addition to gathering all this information, these big tech companies let you view it and download it for your own use as well. You can move contacts between Google and Microsoft if you change services, keep your calendar up to date, and get offline copies of your cloud-based files easily. You can gain a lot of advantages by knowing what data all of these companies store for you, and it’s never bad to make a safe, offline backup of the files, emails, and contacts that you depend on.