Google+ has a very flexible and unique feature that enables you to
back up everything you upload to the service. It may be that you, heaven
forbid, want to cancel your Google+ account and want to be sure you
have a copy of all that precious data you uploaded to the service. Or
maybe you just want to be safe and have a backup here or there.
What you can back up
Backing up data isn't limited to just Google+; Google pulls in
elements from other Google products to allow you to back up those items
as well. Using Google+, you can back up the following to your computer's
hard drive:
Articles that you have +1'd
Your Google Buzz posts (if you're a Google Buzz user)
Google Buzz is a news aggregation
service integrated into Gmail that you can use to read news from your
friends. Google Buzz is considered a predecessor to Google+.
All your Google contacts and circles
All your photos (including those saved as copies on Picasa Web)
this includes all the photos you've uploaded to Google+ and any you've uploaded to Picasa Web in the past.
Your profile data
Your stream data
This includes every post you've ever posted to Google+.
You can choose one of these options, some of them, or all of them,
and they will be downloaded to your hard drive after you follow the
steps in the next section.
Backing up your Google+ data
Backing up your data is very easy on Google+. To back up everything, just follow these steps:
Click the little gear icon in the upper-right
corner of the Google+ sandbar and click Google+ Settings in the
drop-down menu that appears.
The Google+ Account Settings page appears.
On the left, click Data Liberation.
The Data liberation settings page appears.
Click Download Your Data.
To download everything, just click Create
Archive. To download individual items from Google+, click Choose
Services, and you can pick which services you want to back up. You can
also just click one of the individual links below the Create Archive
button.
You'll be taken to a really cool page with moving bars signifying that your data is being backed up.
When the archive is done, click the Download button.
You may be asked to authenticate, and, if so, once
you do as asked, the download will start. After the file has
downloaded, a zipped file will appear on your hard drive. You should be
able to just double-click it.
Now, all your data will be in an organized format in a folder on your hard drive, as follows:
Buzz and Google+ posts will be stored in HTML files.
Contacts will be in .vcf contact format that most e-mail programs can understand.
Your profile is stored in a simple format that other profile apps on the web can read.
+1's are stored as bookmark files that you can import as bookmarks into your browser.
