Google Voice personal data can be exported

Google has been working hard to differentiate itself from other web services that try to “lock” their users into their services by making it hard to export data out.

Google users can export data from many Google sites using Goolgle Takeout, an export service that lets people download their data. There’s no question that keeping a local copy around may prove useful, in case something catastrophic happens (to Google’s service), or if your account is disabled/deleted for some reason – any reason.

Google Voice is the latest service that you can export from, thanks to Takeout. With it, it is possible to retrieve information such as phone numbers (.vcard), SMS (.html), call history, voicemail messages (.mp3), greetings and call recordings.

Although this can be incredibly handy, a very small percentage of users actually export their data out of a cloud service. What’s your take on it? [official Google blog post]