Nextcloud Leaps Forward With One-Click Google and OneDrive Migration

In the midst of a steady stream of breaches, outages and egregious policy changes, there exists an increasing desire — whether among individuals or businesses — to truly own our data. While services like OneDrive, Google Drive and Google Photos are affordable and convenient, this comes at the expense of our digital privacy and freedoms. And that’s precisely where open-source cloud solution Nextcloud wants to enter the picture.

Nextcloud has really been firing on all cylinders lately, from the relatively new Nextcloud Hub to what feels like constant quality-of-life improvements to its core services. Now the company is delivering a serious punch to the face of megacorp cloud companies by offering what it calls “one-click migration” from OneDrive, Dropbox and Google services.

“To really change the dynamics of the internet and the massive privacy violations that have become core to the business model of many internet giants, alternatives have to challenge them in capabilities. Migration has to be seamless before the vast majority of users is able to move and adopt privacy-friendly solutions and today, we make a big step forward in that regard.”

— Jan-Christoph Borchardt, design lead at Nextcloud GmbH

For example, if a new user wants to de-Google their lives, Nextcloud will move your calendars, contacts, photos, and documents from Google’s various services into the respective Nextcloud services.

Migrating from Dropbox and OneDrive is also possible, and Nextcloud says that it can even preserve file and folder structure for OneDrive, and directory structure for Dropbox.

Nextcloud even has integrations with team-based platforms like Slack, Matrix and Teams, making it entirely possible to move your entire operation, regardless of size or complexity, to Nextcloud.

The benefit of course is the flexibility and control. I’m moving about 90GB of Linux For Everyone data to a Nextcloud instance on Linode, but I could also host all of my photos, contacts, documents, music and video from a Nextcloud instance on my Raspberry Pi.

What remains to be seen is how smooth this one-click cloud transition is in practice; something we intend to test in the near future.

Curious about it? You can try Nextcloud live in your browser, or get a free account at one of several Nextcloud providers.