Indeed, common data structures across platforms feels more common than specialized ones, biggest difference seems to mostly sit in the UI/UX layer at this point.
Yes, we had a look at the data transfer project, but it really felt more like an alibi. Looking at it now, I do not see much improvement. I don't think you can force companies to offer data exchange interfaces, if they have no benefit from it.
> Looking at it now, I do not see much improvement
Same here, very disappointing.
> I don't think you can force companies to offer data exchange interfaces, if they have no benefit from it.
Me neither, and neither does the people who came up with GDPR. That's why the "Data Portability" directive doesn't dictate exactly what format/model your exported data has to be in. It simply has to be exportable in a machine-readable format. The reason that it's just about exporting and not transferring, is because companies still are on the fence to allow users to move to different companies with their data. This directive does force those companies to finally behave in the favor of their users, instead of shareholders.
Data Transfer project is also trying to define some common data models that companies can use to ensure they export/import agreed data models, although it's still not very extensive: https://github.com/google/data-transfer-project/tree/master/...