Sunday, July 3, 2011

Google Takeout

Google released recently a service to donwload all the information that one has stored in their services. I immediately wanted to try this in the hopes to recover my movies that I uploaded to Picasa, movies that one cannot download in the original form right now.

The service is intuitive and minimal as usual for a Google service. If only it would work as well...

The first problem was when it indicated that my Picasa archive will be 2 GB, a very surprising detail given the fact that I pay $20 to have 80GB, 50% of which I use. Apparently, there go my hopes for a copy of my movies... Nevertheless, I give it a try and press "Create Archive". A nice progress bar appears and marks the progress. When it reached 100% a download button appeared. Happy, I pressed the button and immediately received a "Page not found" error. Hmm... I must have done something wrong, right?

Tried it 2 more times and each time something else "happens", but the end result is the same - there is no way for me to download my Archive!

Maybe it is my fault somehow, or the fault of my computer's configuration. Maybe. However, this takes me back to the point that I just cannot understand how a company that gives me a service for payment ($20 remember?) does not have a customer service center...

This model of recent years of internet giants who deny customers a proper human response is annoying and worrying. Maybe that should be the next startup, a general purpose online customer service company that takes care of your complaint for a fee.