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Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

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Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#51

Post by andrewmutz »

The actual headline is slightly less inflammatory: "Google Promises Unlimited Cloud Storage; Then Cancels Plan; Then Tells Journalist His Life’s Work Will Be Deleted Without Enough Time To Transfer The Data"

The facts of the article are even less inflammatory. The journalist uploaded 237.22 TB of video to his google drive when the "unlimited" plan existed. When google phased out the unlimited plan, he's not paying for a non-unlimited plan, and his account entered a read-only state. Now, the account is scheduled for termination since he's not paying for a valid current account.

It would cost the guy $5000 a month to store his data on S3 and he doesn't want to pay that, so he now needs to find someone to bear the cost of storing his video files before his account terminates.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#52

Post by winter_blue »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #41
tedivm wrote: post #24

People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. I've spent years as a consultant, and several more in the startup world, and I'd rather host all my content in us-east-1 than rely on google. * I've had customers get their cloud accounts shut down for a literal three cent billing error, * I've seen people who use Google for advertising pay thousands of dollars and…

> * I personally ran a website with Google Ads, and the first time I tried to cash out was accused of click fraud and had all the earned money stolen, I've heard of this happening to a lot of people. I hate using Adsense, and have mainly disabled it in the past, but it seems when I do, I get super heavy traffic and always think, "darn, I should have kept Adsense running". I'm wondering if it's worth slowing down my s…

> but it seems when I do, I get super heavy traffic

Do you mean you get more traffic when Google Ads are active/present on your website?

I.e. that the google search ranking algorithm prioritizes websites running Google ads?

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#53

Post by jeremyjh »

ofrzeta wrote: post #29

Google charges USD 0,15/GB for egress traffic out of GCP. That's USD 36864 for 240TB. Am I right? EDIT: Actually egress seems to be 0,08. So roughly half of what I wrote.

The article said it was stored in a Google Workspace account, which means it is Google Drive and there are no egress fees.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#54

Post by jsnell »

nhumrich wrote: post #40
mngdtt wrote: post #27

The title is wrong. He had the option of paying for the space at least for the time that it takes him to download and archive the data himself.

Source? None of the emails shown said anything about buying additional space.

The first email shown in the article ends with the call to action of "get more storage" and a link. Pretty obviously that would be buying additional space, not getting it for free.

(But it would cost something like $5k-10k/month, not the ~$10/month that he seems willing to pay.)

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#55

Post by datadeft »

tedivm wrote: post #24

People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. I've spent years as a consultant, and several more in the startup world, and I'd rather host all my content in us-east-1 than rely on google. * I've had customers get their cloud accounts shut down for a literal three cent billing error, * I've seen people who use Google for advertising pay thousands of dollars and…

Google decided it is time to sell GA for enterprises with 3rd parties involved. One client of mine (1B+ revenue, Xth largest website in Europe where x < 10) did not sort out the 3rd party agreement on time. Google's answer: we are going delete all of your data. Have a nice day!

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#56

Post by tky »

It appears that he had a Workspace account which offered “unlimited” storage for a time, predicated on the account type being multiuser businesses or education, with a per-seat fee. Google phased out the unlimited storage awhile ago (over a year) after people discovered a loophole where paying for one account still provided unlimited storage. Predictable abuse followed (see /r/datahoarders).

While I’m sympathetic to the user and skeptical of Google’s commitment to their customers, this doesn’t appear to be a straightforward case of someone getting Scroogled. If he were paying for the consumed storage as a standard Drive customer, this wouldn’t be happening.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#57

Post by DeathArrow »

is_true wrote: post #32
wkat4242 wrote: post #2

This is one of the reasons i dont like cloud. I only use it for (encrypted) backups and temporary sharing. Not for important stuff. Also i dont want my account or data to be randomly deleted due to vague terms and conditions or policies.

The cloud should be treated as a cheap microSD

If it's Google Cloud you are talking about, then cheap as in cheap quality, yes. Cheap as in low price, no.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#58

Post by deafpolygon »

plagiarist wrote: post #21
theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

> And, yes, some people have asked why Tim doesn’t have other backups around, but (again) the FBI took all of his shit. I was about to say 'you should have other backups', but the FBI is a very powerful persistent threat, and might be the more important problem.

Seems ludicrous that they can get a warrant to take everything if he really was just hitting URLs.

Worse than that- even if you are adjacent to a crime that took place and not the suspect, they can also invade your privacy - rifle through all of your private data online and so on.

I had a friend who owns a PC repair shop who bought a laptop from another 'friend' that was sold to him illegally. (He did not know it was illegally stolen from the next state over) The state police came in (with FBI in tow) and seized all of his equipment. Every last computer (all of his own, as well as customers that had their pc in for repair) in the shop was checked over.

They held onto his equipment (along with 3 other customers) for 6 months, and he had to make do with a laptop to keep his business running. Fortunately, he had backed up his PC repair software to another location. Or he would have been out of business.

All because the FBI wanted to be thorough. Not because he was on suspicion of a crime.

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#59

Post by [deleted] »

pasttense01 wrote: post #13
wkat4242 wrote: post #2

This is one of the reasons i dont like cloud. I only use it for (encrypted) backups and temporary sharing. Not for important stuff. Also i dont want my account or data to be randomly deleted due to vague terms and conditions or policies.

What is essential is to have important data stored in more than one place, something this journalist failed to do. Just storing it at home would also be a mistake--in case your house burns down.

[deleted]

Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

#60

Post by oefrha »

ofrzeta wrote: post #29

Google charges USD 0,15/GB for egress traffic out of GCP. That's USD 36864 for 240TB. Am I right? EDIT: Actually egress seems to be 0,08. So roughly half of what I wrote.

No, download from Google Drive (Workspace or not) is free. They don’t promise they’ll actually let you download 240TB in 7 days, though.

Honestly, /r/datahoarder with their 240TBs or more is why we can’t have nice things…

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