In one of our previous articles, we demonstrated how a user can backup all his data from Facebook on his local computer. We used Mozilla Firefox with ArchiveFB plugin installed on it to do the trick. The only setback was that the above trick worked with Facebook alone and did not provide any solution if you wanted to backup your data from other services, for example, Google.
On 28th June, Google unveiled its new service named Google Takeout to address the above problem. Google Takeout is a free service by Google that allows you to download a copy of your data stored within Google products on your local computer, in form of an archive. Takeout is the first product from Google’s Data Liberation Front team, an engineering group tasked with the goal of making it – in their own words – easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products.
How to Use Google Takeout
Step 1: Visit Google Takeout homepage and sign in to your Google account.
Step 2: Before you can backup any data, you need to select the services you want to perform the task on.
Either you can select all the services at once, or you can select services one by one according to your priorities.
Step 3: Once you have selected all the data you want to backup, click the big red button 
at the end of the page.
Step 4: The backup process will start with the creation of an archive file for all your data. Creation of archive may take few seconds to some minutes, depending on the size of the backup. It might be enough time to go and grab a cup of coffee.
Step 5: Once the backup is ready, go to the download tab and click the download button. You will be asked to re-authenticate your Google account. Once the authentication is successful your download will start automatically.
Note: Usage of any download accelerator to download the backup may cause problems. Please use default browser download to save the backup .
After the download is successful, open the archive. You will be amazed to see data organized in folders making it a treat for users.
Pros and Cons
All the data downloaded in the archive are in portable and open format and thus exporting the data to other services is a very easy task.
However, the service does not provide any scope to download data from Gmail yet.
My Verdict
Google Takeout is an awesome service to get a backup of all the valuable data from Google servers. The service did not get the limelight it deserved because of parallel launch of Google Plus but definitely has potential, and should be considered for use by all Google users.
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