Live data from Hacker News

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

techdirt.com

241–250 of 692 posts

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

#241
post #74

Unicorn tech founder here. Google — if you are reading, it’s stories like this and examples where you c.10x the price of products overnight like Google Maps that I would never let our team use GCP. Your reputation is losing you business here.

Someone else up-thread mentioned that they add Google as a risk when documenting risks.

I have run a 100+ user non-profit on Google Workspace. I’ve used it for many clients over the years.

There’s a reason Azure and AWS get my spend these days.

One of the biggest liabilities GCP has is that “G”.

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

#242
post #155

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…

For 5k you could build a box to store that kind of data. Throw in a case of beer, and maid services to clean up your living room afterward, and you'd still make budget. ETA: OK maybe more like 10-12k it would be.

The guy's boxes were confiscated by the FBI, which was why he'd been forced onto cloud storage.

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

#243

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.

> 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. Google clearly made a mistake in offering an "unlimited plan" so it makes perfect sense that they're going to discontinue it, and offer 60 days before the data becomes read…

[deleted]

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

#244
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but they actually provide real support. I once complained on Twitter that I was having trouble with an EKS issue, and the product manager for EKS reached out to me directly, put me in contact with one of their engineers, and then they discovered an issue and rolled out a fix for it that day. In a separate incident, I couldn't get GCP to read the verification data for a domain from their webmaster tools…

It's not support if you have to complain on a public forum though.

They do have support channels depending on your account type. I've used the enterprise support and they respond well.

They even go into your cloud architecture and tell you where you fucked up.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system Why do you think this?

[flagged]

That is maybe 3600€ worth of HDDs at current prices. I would consider that a loss leader.

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation. Why do you think this?

Because they are using 237 Tb in an "unlimited" service from Google. And based on the mechanism they are using to pay for it (enterprise account with one seat) - they knew they had found a loop hole in google policy. (r/datahoarders) Seriously I'm all on board with giving Google the much grief that they deserve - but I also would expect someone claiming victim here to have more of a claim than abusing a "unlimited" a…

> 237 Tb in an unlimited service from Google

So, not excessive. 237 TB does not exceed unlimited. What am I missing here?

>they knew they had found a loop hole in google policy.

What, exactly, is this loop hole?

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

#247
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

[deleted]

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

#248
post #183
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.

Google just spends millions of dollars building a product then dumps its own baby on the streets.

Then goes and makes new babies.

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

#249
post #115
post #97

I wonder why did they not have local copy of such important data? Isn't that only safe way anyway?

> And, yes, some people have asked why Tim doesn’t have other backups around, but (again) the FBI took all of his shit.

And did that happen in December? If it is truly important data I would expect process of new backups to be started immediately. After finding new device to order some disks online when the agents left.

And then hide those very well...

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

#250
post #142

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…

> It would cost the guy $5000 a month to store his data on S3 and he doesn't want to pay that The standard S3 tier, sure, but Deep Glacier would be about $250/month. Retrieval can be up to 12 hours but that shouldn't really be a problem for long term archiving. As with anything AWS, egress can kill you, but you can sidestep that with something like Snowball, and really that's only an issue if you need to egress every…

Deep glacier is unviable for anything except partial retrieval.
Post reply on HN