Brian Fitzpatrick: So I'm here
to talk today about a team
that I started a few years ago
at Google with the best logo ever.
We're called the Data Liberation Front.
Not to be confused with
the Front of Data Liberation
or the People's Front [audience laughter]
of Data Liberation.
Exactly.
Thank you.
Okay.
This is going to be a good crowd.
We started,
we chose this logo particularly.
A few reasons.
One is that what big company
lets people take their data out?
Makes it easier for people
to take their data out.
We saw ourselves as revolutionaries.
Turned out within Google,
not very revolutionary at all.
But beyond that, 
we wanted to evoke an emotion.
We wanna get people,
not just technologists,
to start thinking about their data.
As something that's not just
a bunch of ones and zeroes.
Think about it like it's really
important because it is.
Your data is very important to you.
We also earn the sustainability if
you're not into the revolutionary thing.
But we have a very simple
mission statement.
We're here to make it easier to
get your data in and out of Google.
Beyond that, 
we want to raise awareness.
We want people to think
more about that.
So I'm gonna talk a bit about why
it's important to think about your data,
why it's important to make sure
the data isn't locked in,
why it's good for business
and lastly, why we,
as technologists,
need to think more about our data
and about what we're doing withdata.
And we need to get more
people to think about it
because actually I think the future
of our legacy of data
and the memories are actually
somewhat in danger here
if we don't move quickly.
So to be clear there's a lot
of different types of data
that we as a company deal with.
We have data that's authenticated.
We know exactly who you are.
We have data that's,
that's not necessarily authenticated
tied to an IP address which is
eventually anonymized further
and lastly we have data
that we crawl from the web,
geographic data,
that sort of thing.
We're focused very specifically
on the data that, your data
that we know exactly who you are.
Now this didn't start four years ago.
This started a very long time ago.
When I graduated from college,
this was my very first e-mail address.
I'm not going to give you
my BITNET address.
I graduated and I probably had less
e-mail from my college career
than I get in a day today.
But I was really annoyed that
I couldn't take that with me.
Nobody thinks about sucking data
out of a giant mainframe.
'Oh. You mean take that with you?
Ha, ha, ha. 
That's so funny.'
But then I was moving
a few years back
and I came across something like this.
How many people have one of
these somewhere up in a closet?
Right?
This is really important stuff.
I mean my version of this box
has pictures of my family,
my grandparents, my great-grandparents
in some cases.
It has letters that my grandparents
and my parents wrote.
This is really important stuff to me.
Unfortunately, it sort of
sits in a closet somewhere.
Can't really share it, 
pull it out once every few years,
flip through it,
and 'Oh yeah.
Maybe I'll take something out
and scan it in.' That sort of thing.
But where are we putting this now?
Is it a good idea if we're gonna have
this all stored in the Cloud somewhere
and can't get a hold of it or
someone deletes it after six months
because we haven't logged in somewhere?
We need to think about this more and more.
Now when people find out they,
at a conference or at a party,
I meet somebody,
especially non-technologists.
We're having a drink and they say,
'Oh where do you work?'
And I say, 'I work at Google'
and they say, 
'Oh my God. Google.
I love how you guys change the logo
and the Pacman thing and this,
do you do that?'
I say, 'No'. 
'Well, what do you do at Google?'
[laughter]
'Well, I have this team called
the Data Liberation Front
and what we do is [snoring].'
[laughter]
Why do they care?
Why should they care?
They don't deal with data.
They do deal with photos.
They do deal with letters.
They do write e-mails.
But they don't think about it that way.
So I say to them,
'Would you move into
an apartment building
where you couldn't move any of your furniture,
clothes, or pictures or your books out
at the end of your lease?
Would you lock yourself
in jail voluntarily?'
Well, aside from you.
[audience laughter]
We do this to our data all the time.
We don't think twice about it.
And I talk a lot about Open.
And I think people confuse why
Google as a company thinks openness.
We talk about Open Source,
Open Web, Open Data,
all these different things.
People don't have high expectations
of most big companies, right?
They get you as a customer,
you're a customer in a big company
and the next thing you expect is they're
gonna hit you with orbital mind lasers.
Now I can name a lot
of different companies
but I'll tell you about one specific one
with a big round logo
that we're all very familiar with.
Certainly don't expect a lot out of them.
[audience laughter] 
It's not about being nice
although I kind of think we are nice,
at least I am.
It's not about morality.
Open versus closed is not a statement
that I'm making on morality.
The statement I'm making is that
if you lock your users in it,
makes you complacent.
If you don't have to work as hard
as you can to keep your users,
you're not going to.
One way to keep your
users is by innovating,
by making your product better.
How many people here bought a two
year contract to use Google Search?
How many people bought
a piece of hardware
just specifically for using Google Search?
Other than you?
There's always one.
You got taken by the way.
[audience laughter]
If you lock your users in,
your product could be dead
on the vine
and you're not even gonna know it.
If it's easier for your users to leave,
it's a way they're gonna give you
a strong signal
that they've had it or that they
want to go somewhere else.
Fifteen years ago,
if you bought a piece
of software, ahhh!
You get in your car,
you go to the store,
you get a box.
You come home with that box.
You open it up.
You have 10 or 15 diskettes in it,
3 1/2 inch floppies probably.
If you're lucky, you get a manual.
You stuff all these disks
in your computer,
your big tower probably.
Reboot it seven, eight, nine times.
And you're ready to use this software 
and your neighbor's kid
comes over and tells you,
'You bought the wrong software.'
You get back in your car.
You repeat this thing.
Right now, I could e-mail
or post a link on Twitter,
Google+, Facebook.
Just a piece of software
on the web.
Everyone in this room could be
trying it out within two minutes.
I could talk about an app for
your Android Phone or your iPhone.
You could download and
try it in just seconds.
The cost of switching
is approaching zero.
The speed at which you can
try new things out
is faster and faster every day. 
Choice and trust are
becoming really important.
If a company wants people to try
their stuff and stick with them,
trust actually matters now.
We've gone from a disconnected
bunch of computers
to a global network of distribution
that's almost free.
This is why the game has changed.
This is why it's important
to focus more on your users.
Trust matters.
You don't want to lock
your users in further.
There's a lot of different kinds
of lock-in we deal with every day.
Buying hardware is a type of lock-in.
Training to learn a piece of
software is a type of lock-in.
Anybody here fly a lot?
Oh boy.
Frequent flyer miles
it's a type of lock-in.
Do we need another kind of lock-in?
I would argue that we don't.
So in Data Liberation, 
we encourage people as a way of raising
awareness to ask three questions
before you use a piece
of software on the web,
particularly where you're putting
your data in.
Can I get my data out in a format
that somebody can do something with?
If you can't get it out at all,
obviously there's a no-starter there.
If you can get it out in
some obfuscated format,
governments are big fans
of PDFs we all know.
Glad to see that's changing
but you need it in some sort of format
that you can do something with.
Or someone else can who
has the techno capabilities.
I would argue it shouldn't cost you
anything extra to get your data out.
If you're using a free service,
it should be free to get your data out.
If you're paying for a service,
it should be included.
You shouldn't have to pay to leave.
Now the last one is the tricky one.
This is what most people forget about
is that time is important here.
And sometimes a company might say,
'Oh. Well you can get your data out.'
Let's say you have a photo service,
okay?
Now you can go and click on each
of your photos and download
and save as and blah, blah, blah
which is great if you have
five photos up there.
That's no problem.
I wouldn't mind doing
that for two minutes.
If you have 5000 photos,
you're gonna have to call your boss,
take the week off
and sit home clicking a mouse
for five days.
Are you really gonna do that?
Probably not.
So we started working on this.
We went from product to product
making it easier to get data out.
Blog is a good example.
Right there at the top-- 
'Import Blog', 'Export Blog', 'Delete Blog'.
Delete is important.
Very important element of control.
Shouldn't be tied to export
because sometimes I might want to take
my data out to try another product.
Just a copy.
Great thing about data
is you can copy it for,
almost for free.
Google Docs, we worked so that you
can actually choose different formats
for your docs and spreadsheets,
PDF, whatever, etc.
Wrap them up in a zip file
and shoot it down for you.
So that was good.
We were pretty excited about that.
But last month we released
a new product,
our first official Google
product called 'Takeout'.
We're pretty happy with it.
And basically it gives you a way
to take your data out
for multiple products at once.
And we launched with a subset of products
and our goal is to keep adding products
and I will not be happy until
every last byte of your data
is available through this product.
[audience applause]
Thank you. 
[applause continues]
Don't get too excited.
The way that we as technologists
have thought about data up until now,
specifically personal data,
I would argue it's flawed. 
We've been very focused
on implementation
as opposed to what is
the right thing to do.
Let's think about mail.
Let's say that we're gonna
start writing back and forth.
Now if I write you a letter
and I keep a copy of that,
let's say that I put carbon paper
behind it and make a carbon copy.
How many people here have ever
seen a piece of carbon paper?
More than I expected.
Wow.
That, so if I keep a copy of it
and I send you a letter
and you write a letter and
make a copy and send it to me
and we go back and forth
and correspond for awhile
and after awhile, I decide I've had it.
And I'm going to burn all my mail,
my copies, your copies.
It's understood that you're still gonna
have a copy of our correspondence.
That's sort of how it works.
It's an implementation of postal mail.
We took this with us to e-mail.
So we could e-mail back and forth.
I automatically get a copy of my mail.
You automatically keep
a copy of your mail.
We both have copies of everything.
I decide I've had it with the internet.
I haven't had it with the internet.
I am going to delete all my mail.
Now it's understood that you're
still gonna have copies of that.
We understand that it's
an implementation detail.
It started to get tricky here
when blogs started to come along.
I'd write a blog post.
You might comment on it.
You might comment on it.
I'd comment again.
We'd start a big conversation.
Maybe we'd be solving the world's
problems in this blog post.
What if I just said,
'Oh. You know.
Somebody disagreed with me.
I'm deleting my blog post.'
Poof.
Everything disappears.
What if you decide
"I'm tired of trolling this guy? 
I'm gonna delete all my comments".
Oftentimes, that's possible.
Is it the right thing to do?
You're changing a story 
when there's a central copy
of something stored
as opposed to people
having multiple copies of it.
I would argue that it's an implementation
detail that we've been left with.
But it gets worse.
If we're collaboratively editing
a document, okay?
So maybe it's just a few of us
working on this document.
Maybe it's just one person.
[audience laughter]
But what if in this document,
it's not just you that wrote it
but I actually helped out.
Okay?
I added a few sentences.
I fixed a couple of typos here and there.
Two weeks later I decide that I'm mad
at you and I don't like you anymore
and you're no longer my friend.
Should I be able to go in there and
delete just the pieces that I wrote?
It's almost as if you could
take a thread out of a sweater.
I want my thread back.
And now you have a sweater
that falls apart.
Is that the right thing to do?
Photos get even more interesting.
The example people
love to use in photos is,
'There was a photo that
someone put up of me
and I didn't want it up there
and I wanted it deleted.'
Well, what if there was a bunch
of other people in that photo
who liked the photo?
What if it was just a photo
of me that I really liked?
Joi Ito , I had dinner with him
a couple of years ago
and he took a picture of me
and I didn't know
what the hell he was up to
but I actually kind of
liked this photo.
I think it's sort of silly.
A little bit Salvador Dali 
but I refer people to this photo
all the time.
Now in the past, if someone
took a photo of you you liked
or a photo of something you liked,
you would say,
'Can I get a copy of that?
Can you make me a print of it?
Can I borrow the negative?'
Today we just link to it.
It's a central photo.
Okay.
It's great.
What if he decides to delete it someday
and I don't have a copy of it?
I'd be kind of bummed.
What if I have all these links in
the web that are pointing to it?
Suddenly they're pointing to nothing.
I think this is a problem.
These arbitrary technical decisions
are affecting the future story
and how we control our data.
Now a lot of people will say,
'Well, you know, copyright
and copyright and ownership.'
That's why I don't talk about
ownership and copyright
because 1500 lawyers rappel from
the ceiling and beat me to a pulp.
But the fact of the matter is
that copyright came into being
somewhere around 1710.
I don't think they knew
about the internet.
I don't think they wrote it saying,
'One day we're gonna have 25 people
from 15 countries writing one document.'
I don't think they were
thinking about that.
Something's gonna break.
We've gotta think about that.
We've gotta start thinking
about data as our possessions.
Or instead of walking
around wearing a sweater,
we're just gonna have a pile of yarn.
Instead of our kids and our grandkids
having a box of photos,
they're gonna have an empty box.
Thank you very much.
[applause] 
00:15:49.333,00:00:00.000
