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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

#211

Post by robocat »

cochne wrote: post #141
boringg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crisis (!?) is a bit dramatic. Google response isn't correct but everyone here has there hands a bit dirty. Storing 237 Tb on an unlimited server - the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system and probably should have been ready for some kind of remedy.

I hardly think it's fair to say that they were 'taking advantage'. If Google says unlimited, should the typical person really expect that to be taken away? That's a really bad look for Google. "If we offer something that's good value to you, expect it to be taken away suddenly in the future." Those are not the actions of a company I would want to rely on.

> unlimited, should the typical person really expect that to be taken away?

Absolutely. The word "unlimited" has been misused by so many companies (especially ISP and mobile) that anyone who has their eyes open should expect it to mean limited.

Also if there is a deal that is exceeding better than other options, don't be surprised when the rules change later.

Remus says it better in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38628966

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

#212

Post by codedokode »

rkagerer wrote: post #116
hedora wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also banned encrypted files, effectively kicking off everyone using it for backup. I assume this means they look at your photos and other data.

What? How can they tell the difference between an encrypted file vs. some binary format they simply don't understand?

Let me share a Chinese Firewall (according to rumours) algorithm for detecting cryptography: count number of 0 and 1 bits. If the number is almost equal, it is likely encrypted content.

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

#213

Post by ansible »

TomK32 wrote: post #50
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.

Just looking at the cheap 20TB disk drives available here in Austria, the disks alone add just over 4000 Euros to that, and then you still need a machine to host 12 drives, I see one QNAP for 12 disk for only 1500 Euros. But it has only a 2x10Gb connection. Slimming down the data sounds like the first thing to do here.

It is likely uncompressed video, so that really means just picking and choosing what to keep. Most of it is likely trash anyway.

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

#214

Post by that_guy_iain »

rkagerer wrote: post #139
that_guy_iain wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" You just expanded it. It's still basically the same. > 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 hi…

Unlimited means unlimited. Too often what gets lost in the phrase "edge case" is that there's a human being on the other end. They should do the decent thing and work with him and anyone else storing more data than can be practically downloaded to come up with a workaround or extension. Imagine if your bank closed your account and forfeited your money because they couldn't dole it out to you fast enough.

While they had unlimited they didn’t have a problem. But at a certain point someone is going to do the maths and realise the 1% who fully take advantage and go massive in an unlimited offer cost more than you make from the others.

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

#215

Post by Nicksil »

justrealist wrote: post #205
Nicksil wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Things are free when people don't abuse it. Just be normal. Jesus. Well, no, things are free until they stop being free. Who gets to decide what "normal" means.

Life would be miserable if every restaurant had to parcel out individual sugar packets just because 1/100 people decided to abuse it and take them all home. Why do you want everything to be financialized? The world works better when people can use small conveniences non-abusively.

>Life would be miserable if every restaurant had to parcel out individual sugar packets just because 1/100 people decided to abuse it and take them all home.

OK

>Why do you want everything to be financialized?

Where did I say this?

>The world works better when people can use small conveniences non-abusively.

OK

Did you just not want to address anything in the comment you replied to?

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

#216

Post by nickelpro »

Nicksil wrote: post #163
justrealist wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like getting kicked out of McDonalds for ordering a small order of french fries and instead eating 400 ketchup packets. Things are free when people don't abuse it. Just be normal. Jesus.

>Things are free when people don't abuse it. Just be normal. Jesus. Well, no, things are free until they stop being free. Who gets to decide what "normal" means.

There's no such thing as unlimited anything in business.

Every unlimited plan simply means, "we won't tell you the limits."

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

#217

Post by lolinder »

andrewmutz wrote: post #51

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 fo…

> When google phased out the unlimited plan, he's not paying for a non-unlimited plan, and his account entered a read-only state.

You make it sound like he could have chosen to keep paying Google under a different plan, but I can't find any way for him to pay Google to keep the data for him short of creating 100+ dummy "users" in his workspace to get their 2TB each (which I'm sure Google would totally be okay with) [0].

Google is firing him as a customer, which is their prerogative, but they're doing it on a timeframe that means he can't actually get the data out in time. That's what the (actual) headline says, and those are the facts.

[0] https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html

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

#218

Post by smhenderson »

pdonis wrote: post #183
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…

> People really need to understand that Google is a garbage company that can't be relied on for anything. Normally the response to this is, yes, it sucks, but you're not paying Google to host your data. However, it looks like this journalist did pay Google to host his data. So this immediately puts it in a worse category.

That whole "you're not paying"'thing is really a straw man at this point too. When Google was young and eager to be a good netizen I'd have agreed with that and said it was all part of helping to make the web better.

But they've been entrenched for years now, completely dominate so many aspects of the web and get plenty of value out of even their free users.

Given their size and stranglehold on just about everything, pulling an "oops, sorry, I guess you get what you pay for" is just ludicrous at this point.

And sorry if it seems like I'm arguing directly with you, that's not my intention. But I see this a lot and have gone from saying it myself to vehemently disagreeing with it over the last decade or so.

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

#220

Post by iamgopal »

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…

It’s ~18 years since my blogpost blog caught click fraud, I still can’t do many things related to ads because of it. That credit card is still on their record and that address on which I lived total 2 months one and half decades back, is where I live in their record. Stupid stupid company.
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