Comment by GMoromisato
9 days ago
Data portability is, I think, useful even before the service shuts down. If I'm using some Google cloud-service and I can easily move all my data to a competing service, then there will be competition for my business.
What if cloud platforms were more like brokerage firms? I can move my stocks from UBS to Fidelity by filling out a few forms and everything moves (somewhat) seamlessly.
My data should be the same way. I should be able to move all my data out of Google and move it to Microsoft with a few clicks without losing any documents or even my folder hierarchy. [Disclaimer: Maybe this is possible already and I'm just out of the loop. If so, though, extend to all SaaS vendors and all data.]
This mainly just requires the ability to export, and standard formats. For generic file storage, emails, contacts, calendars, etc, this is largely possible already. Though there are minor incompatibilities based on various implementations or customizations on top of the standard.
The big problem comes into play for new, or more custom types of applications. It takes a while for something to become ubiquitous enough that standard formats are developed to support them.