Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's about $20k to egress 250 TB from AWS, so you still come out way ahead.
Anyone contemplating Snowball or Snowmobile needs to be aware that they always charge the per-GB price for data egress, on top of the hardware rental and shipping.
Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
581–590 of 692 posts
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
That argument that GP is making isn't that low prices are bad for consumers. The argument is that amortized over the lifetime of the business, the prices are actually significantly higher because they are able to momentarily drive their prices down, eat the losses long enough to run their competition out of business, and then immediately break the low-priced agreements with their customers. Sure, they may be a commod…
> That shouldn't exempt them from holding up their agreements from when they were still competing for market space. What agreement? They offered a service with no guarantees that it would be provided in perpetuity. If they offered "free unlimited storage for life" and then backed out of that based on some legalese on page 75 of their EULA then I agree that would be slimy. But that is not what happened here. > they ar…
This is the internet. Google has been around since the dawn of the popular internet. At this point, no one should be naive to the abuses that internet-facing services regularly encounter.
The correct thing to do here is not offer a fantasy service to customers. Now that they've offered a fantasy service, they should be on the hook for actually assisting the customers that have been locked into their service.
Admittedly, there's naiveté on both sides here. There difference is that the company is the one with the money and power, and they instigated this relationship by offering the service in the first place. They should shoulder the burden of fixing the problems they have created by attempting to undercut the market when it was beneficial to them.
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's about $20k to egress 250 TB from AWS, so you still come out way ahead.
Anyone contemplating Snowball or Snowmobile needs to be aware that they always charge the per-GB price for data egress, on top of the hardware rental and shipping.
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#584People who say "oh, but it is a loophole". Not really. Google saved a lot of money on marketing by making storage unlimited, comparing to onsite hosting, which was still popular 10 years ago.
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#585What’s a good way to remove Google from my life? I already switched most of my queries to OpenAI. But Gmail and gcal are embedded in many of my daily life
I can also recommend Kagi as a Google Search replacement.
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
Highly recommend reading the article again, slowly, until you fully understand the situation. This was a paid service until Google changed the terms; afterwards, Google claimed that the files would merely be read only (indefinitely), not deleted. After THAT, they then gave the user 1 week to deal with 250 terabytes. Read it again you understand that properly.
> indefinitely Does it say somewhere in terms and conditions?
If Google unilaterally changed its TOS and updated those terms by saying the account would go 'into a read only state' without any further details (both of which in fact happened), the user is entitled to assume that such a read only state will be the new status quo. Google should have specified a time limit or specified that the read only state would be revocable on with no or short notice, at the company's discretion. By staying silent on that matter, Google's communications were misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive the user of the product.
This really isn't rocket science.
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system Why do you think this?
>Why do you think this? Because people with that much data know how much it costs to buy hard drives to store that much data. Ask any of them how Google was supposed to make money off of them as a customer and watch them go for a gold in mental gymnastics.
It's not at all unreasonable to think a company might offer a service where they make a profit on the average customer, but make a loss in some edge-cases. It's not such an uncommon model.
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
Highly recommend reading the article again, slowly, until you fully understand the situation. This was a paid service until Google changed the terms; afterwards, Google claimed that the files would merely be read only (indefinitely), not deleted. After THAT, they then gave the user 1 week to deal with 250 terabytes. Read it again you understand that properly.
I did. I use the term free but it should "incredibly low cost". I accept the blame for my inaccuracy but my position doesn't change. 20$/month for unlimited data that works out to about 0.07$/TB for storage thats pretty damn close to free in my books. How much would a TB cost on S3?
It is able to provide services very cheaply and it is for that very reason that paying customers are attracted to it - and of course, even if a service is cheap, paying for a service creates a different relationship between the service provider and the customer than does a relationship where the customer freeloads. In my view, if this had been a free service the terms of which had changed, there wouldn't be the same scope for outrage. But this was a paying customer, even if he didn't pay as much as you think would have been reasonable - or would have been obtained - elsewhere in the market. Google voluntarily chose those prices for its unlimited plan for competitive reasons and in its own corporate interests. That's on Google, as was Google's subsequent unconscionable behaviour.
In Australia, I suspect this sort of behaviour would provoke very close scrutiny by our antitrust and consumer protection regular, the ACCC. We don't seem to have the same problem with regulatory capture that the US does currently. At the very least here the consumer would have arguable claims under the Australian Consumer Law relating to consumer guarantees and misleading and deceptive conduct in trade or commerce.
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mendacity in your comment coupled with the glee you express in it is disturbing. > Even for Google Podcasts which is being terminated, users who don't pay have gotten notifications for well over a year that the service was going to shutdown Uh, no. It hasn't even been 3 months since the shutdown was announced—and I personally only learned about it a few days after the announcement by a chance conversation with so…
I have this email Recently we announced that Google Podcasts will be discontinued next year. We wanted to reach out directly with more information on what to expect. For now, nothing is changing, and you can continue to use Google Podcasts as normal. Over the coming months, podcasts in YouTube Music will be made available globally and we will start rolling out tools that will enable you to transfer your podcast show…
Oh yeah? That's a weird thing to write instead of just saying, "I admit that I wasn't telling the truth."
PS: Even with your moving the goalposts, September to April still isn't "well over a year".
Re: Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course Google gets value out of free users--that's a huge piece of their business model. And of course if Google had actually kept to their original "don't be evil" model, they wouldn't routinely screw over users the way they do. However, as you note, they have been entrenched for years now, and it has been obvious for that same amount of time that they have long since dropped "don't be evil". So while it certainl…
The average non-tech savvy person doesn't really have an option than to get screwed over then. Assuming you have an Android phone, it's practically required to have a Google account; many apps just flat out do not work without Google Play Services or without signing in with your Gmail account. Yes, I know about microG, Graphene, F-Droid and the like, but the average person is not going to flash their phone. They will…
And you don't need to be hackerman to do this, I told my retired parents "you should check out F-Droid" and they did. Now they recommend F-Droid apps to me.