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by banach2 3598 days ago
I love this idea. Imagine you have a bunch of emails and a bunch of contacts that you'd like to preserve. You're using Gmail and for some reason they've put a bad taste in your mouth. If Gmail were built upon these open foundations then you could simply download your solid archive, and hand it to someone else to take care of.

Regarding the complaints about trust; that should be the realm of litigation. We put trust in our licencing of source code. Your data should be licenced in a similar fashion, and if the handler of your data fails to comply then they shouldn't be allowed to operate.
1 comments
thringsaround 3598 days ago
? I did exactly this with an entire Google account the other day: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

It's all standard formats. Not sure what else you could want aside from a literal Gmail clone.

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banach2 3598 days ago
You're right, but that doesn't include licencing. There's no guarantee that Google won't retain any of your data.

Additionally, there aren't many online services which you can just expect to work after handing them that data.

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thringsaround 3598 days ago
Fair point, it's not "the open web" or whatever. But they do, practically speaking, do everything you need-- and it speaks to other comments about whether "the open web" is really offering something people want. (I certainly do expect any service I'm likely to use to import .vcf or .mbox files without much grief.)
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larl 3597 days ago
This works for Google, but not everyone.
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