This post is part of my series, 12 Years of Gmail, taking a look at the data Google has accumulated on me over the past 12 years of using various Google services and documenting the learning experience developing an open source Python project (Takeout Inspector) to analyze that data.

With the Finishing Touches in place, it's finally time to start looking at some of the data in my Google Takeout Mail export file. What better to start with than the Google Talk (or Google Chat, as I will refer to it) content stored within!

I am starting with Chat because I was surprised to find it all stored in the export file. It makes sense as chat history is accessible from the Chats link in the old Gmail interface (I couldn't find an equivalent in Inbox). My surprise led to curiosity and my curiosity led to obsession with trying to figure how the Chat data is stored and what information each messages contains. It turns out there are quite a few things that can be gleaned from these chat messages -

• Chat vs. Email Usage
• Chat vs. Email Usage (Cumulative)
• Top 10 Chatters
• Chat Clients
• Chat Times
• Chat (vs. Email) Days …

Continue reading