Comment by rabboRubble

good question, not exactly sure, need to download and look at contents... (queue Jeopardy thinking music) ...

Okay, so my account generates five 2GB zip files. I randomly picked file #4 and unzipped to inspect the contents. The structure of the zip file included the following:

* Google Photos

* Contacts

* Drive

* YouTube and YouTube Music

Interestingly, while the general structure looks okay, the content under the directories is incomplete. I'm not sure why this is. Like for example, "Contacts" has only one person's recently added Contact and only a JPG of an emoji face at that. That definitely isn't a complete data set, and makes me wonder if Takeout Services is not a cumulative back up, rather only a delta.

I downloaded a second file, to see how it was formatted. The second file also had Contacts data. It generally followed the contact groupings I have in place (ex. family, friends, medical, shopping, etc.). It had a smattering of .vcf files with profile pictures for some, but not all, people. YouTube directory had what looked to be a complete download of all videos I've ever uploaded, plus various other historical record of my YouTube activity.

Basically, it looks like recovery of a single service is only possible with a full set of recovery files (in my case, all 5 files). The content of each recovered service depends in great part on the nature of the service. There is a lot of garbage in the back up files for the unused / lightly used services. What's happening with the Contacts is a bit concerning since the the data is split between (apparently) all 5 back up files. Same thing for Drive, and maybe Mail.

Recovery of the data and service would be service by service, and dependent on the type of service, and the data provided in each service type.