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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

#671

Post by not_a_shill »

jmd42 wrote: post #587
not_a_shill wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Google only needs to make money on average. 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.

It's completely unreasonable to expect it to be sustainable. Why wouldn't Google eventually crack down on completely negative value customers?

When you use the actual numbers instead of a theoretical argument it falls apart even quicker. These are message board arguments, not ones you'd make with a straight face in person.

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

#672

Post by turquoisevar »

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…

Why are we carrying water for Google here and blaming the user?

Google stated that it would remain in read-only mode and that’s the end of it. It’s bad enough they reneged on their agreement to store unlimited data for x amount of money, but according to you people need to be soothsayers to figure out that a company will reneg on their promise to maintain the data?

And none of that even takes into account that even 60 days wouldn’t be enough to download all that data.

Just stop it. Google is in the wrong and to add insult to injury they don’t provide any means of reaching a customer support representative to mitigate issues caused by their own incompetence.

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

#673

Post by turquoisevar »

People are genuinely breaking their backs trying to carry water for Google here, making comparisons with looting ketchup packets from McDonald’s and other stupid stuff.

None of it changes the simple facts of this matter:

Google sold an unlimited storage plan, not unlimited with a big asterisk but unlimited with terminology such as “as much storage as you need.”

Google then decided they didn’t like that anymore, so they retired that plan and told people that they needed to either free up storage or upgrade within 60 days or else it would switch to read-only mode.

Two things are essential here: 1) 60 days was not enough to download all the data this person had stored, and 2) it said nothing explicitly about deleting data; instead, the heavy implication was that the data would remain stored with the caveat that nothing could be added or edited.

Then suddenly, Google informed the user that they’d delete his data within seven days.

That’s it, no “loophole,” no “ketchup packets,” no nothing.

A promise to be able to use as much storage as you needed in exchange for payment, an implicit promise that the data would be safe, and then a rug pull.

No amount of Olympic levels of mental gymnastics will change these facts.

If Google wanted to renege on its promises, it should’ve provided ample time to download the data. In a general sense, Google, one of the wealthiest companies in the world, needs to stop being a cheapskate and stop refusing to provide basic customer service on their consumer services.

The fact that their “Contact Us” option keeps sending people to a forum for most of their products, which customer service agents don’t regularly frequent, is pathetic.

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

#674

Post by nar001 »

shwouchk wrote: post #530
llbeansandrice wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this comment chain is about 7 deep trying to figure out whether the customer was given enough notice or not I think is also evidence that Google has a terrible UX for this anyway. If your data is going to be deleted, it should be painfully obvious well in advance.

I respectfully disagree. They were clearly given enough notice - from personal experience as I’ve commented already, as well as from sibling comments. If you are still “figuring this out”, I daresay it is simply because you haven’t used the paid service and seen the frequent nagging emails about the transition.

They were given 7 days notice. How is this "enough notice" for 200+ TB?

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

#675

Post by oarsinsync »

compsciphd wrote: post #643
godelski wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sadly in this case can't be used for saying "where google says". I think we're looking at very different things.... there's a screenshot of a literal official email from Google, under the Google Workspace Team. Not sure where you're getting "Google product experts". Did you mean to reply to a different comment?

aren't we referring to the ancestor comment of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38629510 if you're referring to something else, I missed that reference, so my apologies then. I do think google gave sufficient time to move off. I also don't think a "workspace" being in read only mode was ever meant to be a permanent position for that google workspace. i.e. it was meant that "we weren't going to suddenly delete you…

> I do think google gave sufficient time to move off.

The account was given 60 days grace on May 11, 2023.

It’s currently December 15, 2023.

Google Enterprise (Unlimited) accounts are subject to the same 750GB/day limits (I have one of these accounts, my account has also gone RO).

As of today, it’s been 218 days since the notice that the account was over quota and in grace period.

In 218 days, you can download (assuming 100% efficiency) 163TB.

The user has >200TB stored in their drive.

The math doesn’t check out.

EDIT: > As of today, it’s been 218 days since the notice that the account was over quota and in grace period.

Up until that point, the user was still contracted to, and paying for, an unlimited storage solution. Any suggestions that the onus is on the user to be migrating their data out while still paying for a working solution is insane. The onus is on the provider to give the user time to migrate after the terms have changed. Unless we consider Google to be the Sith, in which case, yes, pray they don’t change the terms of the deal any more.

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

#676

Post by [deleted] »

rightbyte wrote: post #133
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting your files in a different provider is technically not a backup, it's a copy. A backup means data durability minimum requirements that most cloud file hosting does not provide without a business-level subscription. Even then it may not be replicated outside a region and not use cold storage. The distinction is important if you want to rely on more than luck to keep your data safe.

Oh come on it is a backup. Any two copies is one backup.

[deleted]

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

#677

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

rightbyte wrote: post #133
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting your files in a different provider is technically not a backup, it's a copy. A backup means data durability minimum requirements that most cloud file hosting does not provide without a business-level subscription. Even then it may not be replicated outside a region and not use cold storage. The distinction is important if you want to rely on more than luck to keep your data safe.

Oh come on it is a backup. Any two copies is one backup.

.....no. a backup requires durability guarantees, as well as regular testing.

If you just keep your second copy on some hard drive collecting dust next to your wireless router, eventually that drive is going to die. But you might not realize it until the next time you try to retrieve your "backup", or power off/on the drive. then you don't have the backup when you need it.

People just assume anything in "the cloud" is redundant or has high durability, but it's not. When you finally need that second copy, it might be gone.

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

#678

Post by LoganDark »

WalterBright wrote: post #594
LoganDark wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's really not. "Never trust your data to the cloud!" They never did. They used the cloud as a backup . They trusted the data to their computer with a cloud backup, which is usually better than not having any cloud backup at all. The problem is that their computers were then seized and they couldn't make another copy of their data in time.

I meant the FBI raid had nothing to do with Google shutting him down. Also, the article did not say he was using Google as a backup. BTW, one can go directly to a store and buy a new computer and start downloading.

> BTW, one can go directly to a store and buy a new computer and start downloading.

Not two hundred terabytes in a week. A week is 168 hours, and a gigabit network connection can only theoretically transfer 450 gigabytes per hour, or 75,600 gigabytes in 168 hours, still a far cry from over 200,000 gigabytes of content to download. Try getting more than a gigabit from anything other than custom fiber installations from a very limited selection of ISPs from a very limited subset of countries.

That's even assuming they're able to just buy a new computer with over 200 terabytes of storage, set it up with a gigabit network connection, and somehow convince google to use a gigabit of upload bandwidth for a week straight, which they definitely will not do for a single customer, considering they already just got cut off for using too much resources.

And that's also assuming the FBI didn't bar them from buying more computers somehow, and that computers are easily available / affordable in their country (including the said over 200 terabytes of storage).

The lowest price-per-gigabyte listed on PC Part Picker (which doesn't have every product ever made, but is still useful) is $0.012, or 6 TB for $71.45[0]. You'd need about 40 of them to hold this data (237.22 TB), which works out to about $2,858 for just the drives.

[0]: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/kXXfrH/seagate-internal-har...

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

#679

Post by therealmarv »

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)

small update: I'm trashing 16TB with many small files. That seems like a multi week operation oO

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

#680

Post by LoganDark »

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…

I would have strongly preferred if my reMarkable didn't come with a mandatory subscription. It's mandatory because you completely lose warranty service if you ever cancel it. The reason? I had been saving up to afford the device for five years and missed the introduction of their subscription by one. single. month. I'm stuck paying forever because I don't count as a "grandfathered" customer.

What's worse is that their customer service told me I'm eligible for unlimited free service, got me to cancel (and lose my warranty), then backpedaled and told me that I'm not actually eligible and on top of that I just lost my warranty.

I managed to get them to un-cancel it but that entire ordeal is just even fucking worse. I never want to deal with that company again, and will not be recommending their products.

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