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Google Data Liberation Group Seeks To Unlock Data
Several sources are reporting that The Data Liberation Front, a new engineering group within Google, is trying make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. They have already "liberated" about half of Google's offerings (including Blogger and Gmail) and have plans to liberate Google Sites and Google Docs in the near future. "In a blog post this morning, Data Liberation engineering manager Brian Fitzpatrick, uses a good analogy to explain why the company sees this is an important step: 'Imagine you want to move out of your apartment. When you ask your landlord about the terms of your previous lease, he says that you are free to leave at any time; however, you cannot take all of your things with you - not your photos, your keepsakes, or your clothing. If you're like most people, a restriction like this may cause you to rethink moving altogether. Not only is this a bad situation for you as the tenant, but it's also detrimental to the housing industry as a whole, which no longer has incentive to build better apartments at all. Although this may seem like a strange analogy, this pretty accurately describes the situation my team, Google's Data Liberation Front, is working hard to combat from an engineering perspective.'"
You should. If you are not jealous and trust her, she'll feel more "free" in the relationship and stay with you. On the other hand, if you keep watching her and always remind her that she's yours, she'll get away.
Doesn't the saying goes something like "The harder you squeeze, the more will slip through your fingers..."?
So yes, in theory is will make people more likely to stay with Google. No fear of being locked means you don't look for a way out, which is a problem for Microsoft right now.
They have a HUGE upside to helping people move their data out of Exchange servers (emails, contacts, appointments, etc) into the paid Google Apps service.. Last time I looked, their tools for doing just this were coming along nicely. That was one of the biggest complaints, getting the email and archives out. This same thing was a big pain, when MS wanted people to migrate from Groupwise and Lotus Notes to Exchange. MS made a nice little importer, but they didn't make their data easy to Export.
That can lead to very tempting sales pitches, give us 6 months, (or a year, or whatever) and if you don't like our service, we'll help you go right back to what you had before.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
The analogy, as with most analogies, is useful for precisely the things it was designed to be useful for, and is misleading when extended.
There is a legitimate fear of Google's tools that you can't apply any other tools to your data. These guys are trying to fix that problem.
There is another legitimate fear that you can't delete your data for certain and ever. That's Somebody Else's Problem, and also not covered by the analogy.
Analogies can be useful to explain things, but they're rarely valid for actually proving things. They're useful for proofs only when the analogy is so precise that it's no easier to understand or manipulate than the original thing.
I think often people confuse "altruism" with "long term self-interest," and that may be the issue Google is considering here. In the short term, you can make it hard for tenants to move out, and maybe gain a little bit of rent that you would not have otherwise gotten. However, people talk and, in the long term, behavior like that can lose you potential customers. You will be forced to drop your rent in order to keep your units full.
(This relates to the best description of "business ethics" I've heard: Ethical business requires that you balance the needs of and try to act in the best interest of your owners, employees and customers. Otherwise, in the long run, you will find yourself without capital, labor, or revenue. Thus, business ethics is about long term self-interest, not some kind of abstract altruism. Sometimes the "long run" takes a really long time, encouraging people to risk unethical behavior, of course.)
Making it easier to leave Google applications helps grow your potential customer base in the future (such as those who are wary of lock in), at the risk of losing current customers who are unhappy with your service. That is a motivation well-rooted in self-interest, as long as you think your product is better than everyone else's.
No. The reason it's a bad analogy is because it misses the key and only crucial point: the fundamental disconnect between "your things" and "cannot take" when the latter is arbitrarily imposed on you by a party that has no legitimate claim on the former. The landlord has no claim on "your things" unless you have breached contract somehow, like not paying rent. Otherwise taking "your things" with you when moving out is an activity not to be questioned at all. A better analogy might be that the mere act of moving in resulted in the landlord claiming "your things" were now "his things" without any justification supported by law or common cultural practice. The Google Data Liberation Group is (belatedly, IMHO) expending energy to rectify a situation that should never have existed in the first place. A laudable effort, to be sure, but one that should not have been necessary.
Are you unaware of their export-to-CSV capabilities..?