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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

#431

Post by layer8 »

voakbasda wrote: post #171
cochne wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With modern connected devices, I absolutely do expect for features (or even total functionality) to be removed on a whim by the manufacturer. Cloud services are no different. Lesson being: do not rely on devices or services that rely on a third party. They absolutely will screw you; it’s only a matter of time. If you do not believe this, then I would say that you have not been around this industry long enough. There…

You may be factually correct, but as a paying customer, this is not acceptable.

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

#432

Post by JohnMakin »

crooked-v wrote: post #414
noobface wrote: post #371

The Google drive unlimited policy has been predictably abused by some of the datahoarding and piracy communities. Those groups have been paranoid for[1] a[2] while[3] that this could and was likely to go away, including tracking changes in the way Google marketed this to users. People with pirated movie collections took this risk more seriously than a guy whose livelihood appears to be inexorably linked with the poli…

> unlimited > abused Using the explicitly stated and loudly advertised functionality of a service isn't abuse.

It sure is if you're a google astroturfer!

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

#433

Post by terminous »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #418
freedomben wrote: post #363

Google deserves some hate here, but this problem is bigger than just them, and I think by being too narrowly focused on G we're missing a systemic problem. G is one of the worst offenders, but this is a cultural attitude/approach in most of tech. The idea is to acquire users by giving stuff away or making your service cheap, lock them in, then squeeze by ratcheting up the price. It's a playbook that has worked fantas…

What is bad about the situation exactly? You get a service for below cost for some amount of time at which point you have to start paying what it actually costs. I can understand if the company manages to corner the market by selling below cost and then jacks up the price way above cost, but cloud storage is still an extremely competitive market and generally quite a bit cheaper than the cost of storing an equivalent…

It is literally anti-competitive, bad for consumers and competitor startups. How can an average startup compete if a rich company or VC backed startup has a business model of selling below cost to get market share? The fact that the big players are doing it makes it an oligopoly not a monopoly, but that's still bad.

This is a 100+ year old problem and has already been solved in other industries, but tech likes to think it is unique. It's a bad pattern to sell below cost to gain market share. Oil and steel companies were selling below cost to undercut competing startups in the 1900s, then raised prices when those competitors folded. It wasn't good for anyone other than the robber barons then either.

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

#434

Post by alwa »

ajross wrote: post #391
imtringued wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Yeah usually the thing about deadlines is that you should communicate them as harshly as possible, then let them slip when they do arrive. Is this not exactly what has happened? He was clearly threatened harshly, and... the data isn't yet deleted?

In this case, the initial notification (reproduced in the article) didn’t threaten to delete the files. Instead of communicating the threat harshly, it said that after 60 days his account would be placed in “read-only” mode.

It sounds like he (I think reasonably) believed that would be the new reality after the grace period: that he couldn’t write new files, but that his existing data would be accessible indefinitely in read-only form.

Sure, it’s clear from the context that Google vaguely wants him to stop being a headache for them. But planning for a read-only future is very different from planning for your data to be vaporized. As GP points out, Google could get eviction done in the same timeframe but save considerable face if the initial correspondence had said “you’re using way too much, it’s against our TOS, and we’re deleting your data in 30 days,” then given him a 30-day “reprieve” when the deadline drew near.

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

#435

Post by layer8 »

deelly wrote: post #268
boringg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account." Thats highly subjective to the point of meaningless.

Wait, so its his fault that he did not pay Google more? "Just in case" money?

He probably wouldn’t have been able to even if he wanted (barring using multiple accounts, which comes with its own problems, including an increased risk of Google taking it as a reason to shut the accounts down).

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

#436

Post by INTPenis »

That headline is kinda funny because in any other context it says "A promised B the world, A lied."

Everyone in society needs basic IT training, everyone, from journalists to doctors. Among other things they need to understand that there is no such thing as unlimited.

And of course, lesson #2, it's always just someone's computer.

Last lesson for today, redundancy, redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.

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

#437

Post by shrimpx »

matkoniecz wrote: post #384
pdonis wrote: 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.

> but you're not paying Google to host your data. My organisation (OpenStreetMap) is paying Google to host our emails. They silently delete random ones, they never arrive at inbox. (we are preparing migration to competing provider) Paying does not help.

Which provider, if you don’t mind me asking?

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

#438

Post by crazygringo »

therealmarv wrote: post #390
crazygringo wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can only trash the files visible there. There's a dedicated "empty trash" button at the top of the web interface. I've successfully emptied the trash of many thousands of files using it -- it doesn't have anything to do with visibility. A couple times I had to use it twice to fully empty, but it still deleted way more than anything visible. Massive bulk operations just sometimes seem to get killed (timeouts?),…

well, maybe the "empty trash" button works as intended (not sure because I see new files showing up in trash). It can be I was not patient enough. The rclone command finishes after a second but also only queues files internally at Google Drive to be fully deleted (so maybe it works the same as empty trash button)

Yeah it's weird that it doesn't have a progress indicator or anything. But if you keep reloading the trash page in your browser, you'll see that files keep disappearing over the course of minutes.

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

#440

Post by chlorion »

garblegarble wrote: post #233
frognumber wrote: post #80

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" Correct. 7 days is not enough time to stream >200TB of data, let alone find a place to stream it to. This puts a human being in a crisis position. He doesn't need to just find someone willing to store his data.…

He had ~6 months to download his data, not 7 days: they told him on the 11th of May 2023 (or thereabouts they gave him a 60 day period ending on the 10th of July 2023) that he had exceeded his quota. They should, of course, have given a clear timeline for deletion at that point, but does he seriously expect other people to believe he was naive enough to think Google would continue to store his data forever after they…

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