Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter Launch Data Transfer Project

The largest internet giants—Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter—have joined forces to announce a new initiative called the Data Transfer Project. This project is designed to enable data transfers between the platforms of these corporations.

In its blog, Google described the project as follows:

“It will allow users to transfer data directly from one service to another, without the need to download and re-upload it.”

The current version of the new system supports data transfers for photos, email, contacts, calendars, and tasks. It utilizes official APIs from Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Remember the Milk, and SmugMug.

The creators of the project hope it will become a more reliable and flexible alternative to traditional APIs. In its own blog, Microsoft has called on other companies to join this initiative.

The project’s current code is available on GitHub, along with a brief guide. This code allows proprietary APIs to be converted for compatible transfers, so, for example, Instagram data can work with Flickr and vice versa.

The developers have also created a system for encrypting transferred data, with secret keys issued for each transfer. It’s important to note that this system is intended for one-time transfers, not for the continuous functional compatibility provided by many APIs.

“The digital future should be more flexible and open. We hope our project will help establish connections between any interfaces of different products, allowing data to be imported and exported on a new level,” the developers write.

At this point, most of the code has been written by developers from Google and Microsoft, who have long been considering the creation of a more reliable data transfer system. According to the authors, the idea arose from frustration with the available data management options, which only partially solved the problem of data transfer.

“People often face the challenge of moving data from one product to another. Solving this problem alone is impossible; it requires the joint efforts of developers from major corporations,” explains Greg Fair, manager of Google Takeout.