Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter have announced an initiative entitled the ‘Data Transfer Project’.
The project was formed so “all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.”
A user currently on an Android device, for example, will be able to benefit by switching to a windows or other device more easily.
It is reportedly designed to help users try new services, which in turn will drive innovation and progress.
Two Google employees, Software Engineer Brian Willard and Product Manager Greg Fair, detail the project in the blog post ‘Introducing Data Transfer Project: an open source platform promoting universal data portability’.
It reads: “The organizations involved with this project are developing tools that can convert any service’s proprietary APIs to and from a small set of standardized data formats that can be used by anyone.
“This makes it possible to transfer data between any two providers using existing industry-standard infrastructure and authorization mechanisms, such as OAuth.
“So far, we have developed adapters for seven different service providers across five different types of consumer data; we think this demonstrates the viability of this approach to scale to a large number of use cases.”
The project is still in development, the website notes. Early adopters should “expect some hiccups”.
Read more here.