"This means that all of the data associated with your Google Voice account, from your call history to voicemail messages, greetings and call recordings, is now available for download," writes Google software engineer Anthony Jawad on the .

Not everyone wants (or needs) to export voice and text messages, of course, which seem a lot less indispensable than family photos in Picasa. Then again, Takeout may come in handy for small businesses seeking a local archive of Google voice and text messages.

Using Takeout

You choose which Google services you want to archive (e.g., Voice). Takeout calculates the estimated number of files and archive size, and then creates a downloadable backup file.

Takeout exports voicemail messages and greetings as MP3s, text messages as microformatted HTML, and forwarding phone numbers as a , Google says.