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Want To Escape Google? There's An App For That

Google understands that sometimes people -- and businesses -- have to pack up and move on to some other service. It is now offering a tool for users of Google Docs whereby they can convert, zip, and download all of their documents at once.

This is interesting. Google is providing its users with the tools they need to liberate themselves from Google's services entirely. Google has an entire team of engineers powering its Data Liberation Front. Their task is to help users retrieve their data from the cloud and take it elsewhere via simple import/export tools.

With respect to the new convert, zip and download tool, Brian Fitzpatrick, Engineering Manager, the Data Liberation Front, writes, "The feature lets you bundle your Google Docs in a format of your choice (MS Office, Open Office, PDF, etc.) and download them as a zip file. No longer do you have to download each document individually, which can take a lot of time if you have hundreds of documents like I do! All you need to do is select the relevant Docs, click on 'Export' from the 'More Actions' menu and download them in one go."

That's very useful indeed. I have thousands of files stored in Google Docs. I was actually thinking the other day what a royal pain it would be to download them one at a time.

If you're interested in liberating your Gmail, you can do that, too. Gmail has an exporting tool to help users divorce themselves from Gmail. Sick of your Blogger account? You can ditch that, too, and transfer all your blog posts and content to another service with Google's Escaping from Blogger tool.

The stated mission of the Data Liberation Front is "Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out." With this set of tools to help people escape from Docs, Gmail and Blogger, it is doing just that.

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