Data Transfer Initiative members Apple and Google introduce new photo and video transfer tool

Beginning today, Apple and Google are expanding on their direct data transfer offerings to allow users of Google Photos to transfer their collections directly to iCloud Photos. This complements and completes the existing transfers that were first made possible from iCloud Photos to Google Photos and fulfills a core Data Transfer Initiative (DTI) principle of reciprocity. The offering from Apple and Google will be rolling out over the next week and is the newest tool powered by the open source Data Transfer Project (DTP) technology stack, joining existing direct portability tools available to billions of people today offered by DTI and its founding partners Apple, Google, and Meta.

For many years, data portability has helped people download their data from one online service and upload it to another. Portability is now something that people have come to expect from the apps and services they use every day, but effective portability takes more than offering download-your-data tools. It requires careful thought to engineering and design to ensure the integrity of a person’s data is intact when going from one service to another.

The Data Transfer Project approach helps with this by aligning data models, authentication, and other necessary elements. DTP is at the core of the Data Transfer Initiative. DTP-powered tools reflect our vision for the future of data portability: providing people with trustworthy tools that offer an easy way to directly transfer their personal internet data.

A lot lies within that term, trustworthy. It includes more than merely protecting security and privacy. It also means that the experience is high quality and that the content is transferred in full fidelity. That takes testing and design thoughtfulness on top of the engineering fundamentals.

At DTI, we’re excited by today’s development. Data Transfer Project-powered tools are best-in-class offerings for direct portability. They help make data portability easier, and are built and tested to ensure a trustworthy and user-centric transfer, and offer an overall better experience for people.

We are nowhere near the end of the data portability journey and every day we continue to explore new services and partners. But today, we are celebrating an additional and important transfer tool joining the toolkit, which is a significant milestone.

You can read more on support pages from Apple here and Google here.