Data Backup Digest

There are rumours floating around the internet that Google is set to close the doors on Google Voice as an application within the year. Although nothing has been officially confirmed by the search engine giant themselves, a number of news sites reported on the rumour and claimed that Google Voice is going to be merged into Google Hangouts. It’s always been a bit odd that some features from Voice, like VoIP calls and SMS messages using the specific number, have been missing from Hangouts.

However, this is all just rumour. In fact, Google could decide to just close down Voice completely and not merge it into anything. But here’s an important question: what about all the personal data that you’ve got stored in the service? If Google Voice closes down without warning, are you prepared?

Now, bear in mind that it’s unlikely Voice is going to shut down suddenly. When Google closed their iGoogle homepage they gave users a year advanced warning. Although such a long time frame may not be offered again, it’s likely that Google aren’t just going to turn the lights out on the service suddenly.

Whenever the time comes that Voice closes down, or merges, or even stays the same, it’s always good to have a backup copy of your data associated with it. This is where Google Takeout comes in. Takeout is a service provided by Google that, at current count, allows you to download a copy of your data from 13 Google products (including Mail, Drive and YouTube).

To get a copy of your Google Voice data, first visit the Takeout page. Next, click the blue ‘Create an archive’ button. You’ll be presented with a list of all the Google products that you can create a backup from. If you just want the Voice data then untick the box next to ‘Select all’ and then tick the box next to Voice.

Just as a side note, it’s always good form to create regular backups of all of your data. As such, if you do use any other Google product, it’s well worth just taking a backup of everything. It’s better to be safe than sorry and it shouldn’t make your archive that much bigger in the scheme of things.

You should now click the ‘Create Archive’ button and the service will work its magic. It’ll take longer to create the archive if you have a lot of data, so you can leave the page if you want and Google will email you to say when the archive is ready.

Once done, a zip file will be available so that you can download the archive directly to your computer. Google keep this file accessible for one week, giving you more than enough time to download it to your device.

If you only want to download specific voicemails then head to Google Voice and then select ‘Voicemails’ from the left-hand side menu. Navigate to the voicemail you wish to backup, then click ‘more’ and then ‘Download’. That’s all!