The Data Transfer Project (DTP) is an open-source initiative which features data portability between multiple online platforms. The project was launched and introduced by Google on July 20, 2018, and has currently partnered with Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and Apple.

Background

The project was formed by the

Google Data Liberation Front The Google Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose "goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products." The team, which consults with other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberat ...

in 2017, hoping to provide a platform that could allow individuals to move their online data between different platforms, without the need of downloading and re-uploading data. The ecosystem is achieved by extracting different files through various available

APIs Apis or APIS may refer to: * Apis (deity), an ancient Egyptian god * Apis (Greek mythology), several different figures in Greek mythology * Apis (city), an ancient seaport town on the northern coast of Africa **Kom el-Hisn, a different Egyptian ci ...

released by online platforms and translating such codes so that it could be compatible with other platforms. Similarly, the Data Transfer Project is currently being used as a part of

Google Takeout Google Takeout, also known as Download Your Data, is a project by the Google Data Liberation Front that allows users of Google products, such as YouTube and Gmail, to export their data to a downloadable archive file. Usage Users can select dif ...

and a similar program in Facebook (called "Access your information"), allowing the two personal data downloading services to be compatible with each other. This allows data to be easily transferred from the two platforms. On July 20, 2018, the joint project was announced. The source code, which has been uploaded to GitHub, was mainly written by Google and Microsoft's engineers. On July 30, 2019, Apple announced that it will be joining the project, allowing data portability in iCloud.

Implementations

On December 2, 2019, Facebook announced the ability for users to transfer photos and videos to Google Photos, originally available only in a select few countries. This expanded over the following months, and on June 4, 2020, Facebook announced full global availability of this feature.

See more

* Data portability *

References

External links

* * Google Computer-related introductions in 2018 Free network-related software Interoperability {{Internet-stub