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

Post by ajross » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #222

resoluteteeth wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah usually the thing about deadlines is that you should communicate them as harshly as possible, then let them slip when they do arrive. I.e. they want people off the service voluntarily and deal with the tiny fraction that refuses.

Post by gambiting » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

yetanotherloss wrote: post #334

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.

Also they've been giving out these warnings for months. I'm sympathetic to the guy with the seemingly abusive legal actions from Fox but this storage problem did not just spring from nothing into the final crisis stage. We had to move a bunch of data off gdrive too, which did little for our opinion of Google's business customer support and was a PITA I didn't need, but the first warnings were in 2002 some time and we…

Post by MetaWhirledPeas » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

DiskoHexyl wrote: post #311

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? I'm a confessed ignoramus but this does not make sense to me. Encrypted data is bits and bytes like everything else. You can compress it. (Maybe not as well as unencrypted text, but still.)

Encrypted data is highly random, and a compression ratio would be close to 1. So yeah- technically you can run a compression algorithm over it, but it won't help much

Post by plorkyeran » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 5:00 PM UTC

croutonwagon wrote: post #275

rkagerer wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unlimited does. And it should. But if its your "lifes work" i would assume the value there is more than just the cost of storage. That the person storing it would have thought about ownership and egress options a bit further out. Like i use workspace for all sorts of stuff. But its google, they can and may just axe your account for any reason. So i have backups of all things at all times and worst case, i just move m…

Post by crooked-v » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #292

Pikamander2 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean 237 TB of data is an excessive amount of data. If it's excessive, then Google shouldn't have offered an unlimited data plan. They could have called it a 100 TB plan, but they chose to call it unlimited to make it sound better and then canceled it once people took them up on the offer. Regardless of whether that kind of action is legal, it's a shady business practice. For that matter, there's nothing wrong wi…

They offered it for 10 years and then probably realized that people were taking advantage of the position and then tried to phase it out. Most likely with a lot of warning beforehand. I have a tough time believe that they didn't give any warning and then kicked them off the service.