Google promises to facilitate data transfer to external services
Google promises to make it easier to transfer user data from Google services to third-party services. The company does this to respond to concerns from the Italian market regulator. He thought that was too difficult and could hinder competition.
The Italian regulator AGCM found that it is currently too difficult for users to extract their data from Google’s services and share it with third-party services. That is why it initiated an antitrust investigation. The AGCM specifically mentioned the services Google Maps, Android and Gmail. Weople was mentioned as an example of an external service. This focuses, among other things, on data portability and the management of privacy rights for various services. Weople’s parent company informed the regulator of this problem, as it believed that the current options for transferring data were unnecessarily complex.
The AGCM let me know now though that Google has responded to the regulator’s concerns and will take steps to improve data interoperability. First, Google promises to take measures in its Takeout service, which allows users to download their own data, which should make it easier to export data to third-party services.
That’s how it should be external parties can embed a link in their own services that largely automates the Takeout process. The services can also choose which supported cloud storage service the data is sent to. The user data must also be made available in a single file and in a machine-readable format. Google is also providing detailed documentation in an effort to make Takeout data more understandable and therefore more useful.
In addition, Google promises to develop a brand new API that will allow developers of third-party services to directly access end-user data on Google Search and YouTube. End users must request this themselves. This API should become available in the first quarter of 2024, but external parties can gain early access as early as October. According to the AGCM, these measures are sufficient to remove concerns about hindering competition.