Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook team up on new data transfer project

By Christian de Looper July 20, 2018

Some of the biggest tech companies in the world want to make it a little easier to transfer your data between services. Google, Twitter, Microsoft, and Facebook have all teamed up for a new initiative called the Data Transfer Project, which is aimed at helping users more easily transfer content, contacts, and more.

The Data Transfer Project has revealed its plans for a new open-source data portability platform that any online service can join. That could be very helpful for users — plenty of services allow you to download your data, but not many then let you upload it into different accounts.

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Google announced the project in a blog post, describing it as a way to transfer data directly between services, essentially meaning that users don’t have to worry about downloading and re-uploading it. Microsoft also called for other companies to join the project, noting that it could be central to better competition — after all, if there’s an industry standard for data portability, companies could instead have to compete on offering useful services, instead of forcing users to stick with their services or risk losing data.

If it reaches its full potential, the project could change the tech industry. Imagine being able to easily switch to a new music streaming service while being able to bring your playlist with you. Or being able to switch to a new mobile operating system without the need to start from scratch.

Of course, there’s one major tech company missing from the initiative — Apple. While that’s certainly not surprising, it is still a little frustrating. Still, the initiative is very much in its infancy, and we could certainly see more companies jump on board.

The initiative could also be groundbreaking for startups. Companies like Google have an advantage in that they already have lots of data on their customers. New companies, however, have no such luxury — but if a user transfers their data to a new service, it could make users feel more at home thanks to the ease of adopting a new service.

We’ll have to see how the initiative evolves, and if more companies jump on board. In the meantime, you can check out the new group’s white paper for more information.

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Microsoft dumps a 40-foot data center to the ocean floor off Scotland’s coast

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Microsoft tests Project Natick, self-sustaining underwater datacenter
Microsoft's Project Natick isn't about a new two-in-one tablet or piece of clever software. Instead, the company wants to sink self-sufficient data centers to the ocean floor. Phase two of its push to revolutionize the data center began on Wednesday as Microsoft's team dropped a container-sized prototype on the seafloor near Scotland's Orkney Islands.
According to Microsoft, the 40-foot prototype contains 12 racks playing host to 864 servers and their associated cooling systems. The team assembled and tested the prototype in France, shipped it to Scotland via a flatbed truck, lowered it onto the ocean floor, towed it out to sea, and connected a cable consisting of fiber optics and power. It now sits quietly with the fish 117 feet below the ocean surface.
Powering this submerged data center is the European Marine Energy Center that relies on tidal turbines and wave energy converters to generate electricity from sea movement. Wind turbines from local farming lands contribute to the power as well. All of this power is piped from the Orkney Island power grid through a cable attached to the data center. At full capacity, the data center uses just under a quarter of a megawatt of power.

While the idea might seem like something out of science-fiction, the realities of water-bound computing, especially on a large scale, are very positive. The remote nature of such a facility would mean it would require fewer on-site staff (if any at all), it would be naturally resistant to weather and the environment, possibly even more so than solid ground structures, and perhaps most importantly, would require almost no active cooling.
Keeping a data center at a chilly operational temperature is one of the biggest challenges for modern operators, with the likes of Facebook looking to innovate by only using renewable energy and recycled waste heat. But putting a data center under the sea could be much more efficient, as it would require no energy to cool at all.
Microsoft's first prototype sat 30 feet below the surface just off the California coast in 2015 and remained there for four months. Named after Leona Philpot, an obscure character from the Halo franchise, it survived perfectly well.
Eventually, Microsoft wants to ramp up and rapidly deploy pre-packaged module data centers everywhere in the world, including "the roughest patches of sea." Microsoft says they could be "ordered to size, rapidly deployed and left to operate lights out on the seafloor for years."

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Europe's data protection law went into effect on Friday and technology giants Facebook and Google are already facing multi-billion dollar lawsuits for failing to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation. The 3.9 billion euro suit against Facebook and 3.7 billion euro suit against Google were filed by pro-privacy advocate Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer, on behalf of unnamed individuals affected by products such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Google's Android operating system. The total lawsuit amounts to nearly $9 billion.

As a long-time critic of Facebook, Schrems argued that the company is violating a provision of GDPR by forcing users to consent to share their personal data, and that the company has gone as far as blocking accounts of users who have not given consent. “In the end users only had the choice to delete the account or hit the “agree”-button -- that’s not a free choice, it more reminds of a North Korean election process," he said in a statement published on TechCrunch.

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With privacy-centric European Union legislation set to take effect soon, and on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook recently introduced a new data policy. Just when you had the old one memorized, right? Facebook says it wants to be more transparent about how its Products track almost everyone who uses the internet – even those without a Facebook or Instagram account.