ShareGate Migrate is a client-side only application that uses available APIs (CSOM, REST, GRAPH, SOAP, etc.) and other methods to copy your source elements at the destination. The app does not interact directly with your database(s).
For more information about Google Drive migrations and prerequisites, see Walkthrough - Import from Google Drive.
Diagram
ShareGate Migrate sends requests to the Google APIs to authenticate your account and get your data from the source.
Your Google drive content, permissions, and metadata are packaged and sent to ShareGate Migrate.
To authenticate your account in admin mode ShareGate Migrate sends a request to our online services in Azure to get an authentication token and a secret key from Google. The token is then sent to ShareGate Migrate and used to authenticate your account securely on Google Drive at point (1).
Requests are sent to get information from the destination.
In Normal mode to a Microsoft 365 destination or any speed mode to an on premises version of SharePoint, your files are sent directly to your destination library instead of the Azure storage described at point (7).ShareGate Migrate sends requests to your Active Directory through SharePoint's people picker service to resolve your users for permissions and metadata values, like created by and modified by.
ShareGate Migrate receives information from the requests sent at point (4).
When you migrate to a Microsoft 365 destination in Insane mode, ShareGate Migrate uses the SharePoint online migration API. Your files are packaged and sent to an Azure Storage with a manifest package. Some requests are sent to Azure to get a status update for the import to Microsoft 365 process that occurs at point (8).
Microsoft 365 imports the packages from the Azure Storage to your destination library.
Azure returns status updates about the packages being imported to Microsoft 365.
Note: The data that transitions through ShareGate Migrate is encrypted when you connect to Google Drive and to a SharePoint site that uses HTTPS. At point (7), Microsoft encrypts your data at rest with AES CBC 256 Standard encryption. For more information see Encryption and security.