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An update to storage policies across your Google Account

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Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A policy change that sabotages an idea that Google itself gave many people just a few years ago. Google's "Dear Sophie" ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhPklt9nYas

I wonder how close that skirts laws around false advertising

Same with the Google Pixel thing, where Pixels had less storage than iPhones, but Google constantly ran ads saying that wasn't an issue because you'd have unlimited storage for all your photos and RAWs, forever, with no restrictions, as long as they were auto-uploaded by Google Photos from the Google Camera on your Google Pixel.

And now even compressed jpegs have a size and time limit.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how close that skirts laws around false advertising

Same with the Google Pixel thing, where Pixels had less storage than iPhones, but Google constantly ran ads saying that wasn't an issue because you'd have unlimited storage for all your photos and RAWs, forever, with no restrictions, as long as they were auto-uploaded by Google Photos from the Google Camera on your Google Pixel. And now even compressed jpegs have a size and time limit.

In fairness, they've persisted this policy for the given phones being advertised.

The OG Pixel said original quality for life, and that persists. Every other Pixel until Pixel 4 had a time limit on unlimited quality original uploads, and THAT persists. And even for Pixel 4 & Pixel 5, they're persisting the unlimited "high quality" storage option that they advertised the phones as having.

Don't get me wrong, I'm annoyed enough about them dropping unlimited original on the 4/5 that I download the 4k videos off of Google Photos and re-upload them over an old Pixel I have to get them to not count against my storage limit. But the ads have matched their current commitment, and they haven't reneged on any of the policies advertised for that given phone, at least.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#384
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FastMail is probably the best among the bunch but it's still worse than GMail: - There is no "always display images from this contact" option if you don't want to load images automatically. You have to click on "show images" every time you read an emai, even from a trusted contact. - There is no "open mailto: links on FastMail" option on desktop. - Spam filter is too aggressive. I've missed too many legit mails while…

> There is no "always display images from this contact" option if you don't want to load images automatically. You have to click on "show images" every time you read an emai, even from a trusted contact. Oh man, this is one feature that I've really missed from Gmail, which actually gives you the best of both worlds by proxying external images from their own servers so images can load automatically without compromisin…

Fastmail has also proxied all images since 2014: https://fastmail.blog/2014/09/16/better-security-and-privacy...

You can configure images to load always, or just for contacts, or always manually.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#385
post #4

> "If you're over your storage limit for two years, Google may delete your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos," the company said. That's different from just deleting all your data because you're inactive. Which is it? Edit: it seems both. Here's the blog post (maybe this is a better link): https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-policy-update/

oh damn. I've created an account for my newborn son on my (free) google workspace domain and send him emails every few weeks with updates and photos. He'll receive the account when he's like 12. Will these be deleted too?

No it won’t, I manage gsuite accounts for non profits and I have multiple accounts which are inactive for two years and the data still remains.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#386
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how close that skirts laws around false advertising

> I wonder how close that skirts laws around false advertising At the time it wasn't fraudulent, though.

If you make "forever" claims in your ads I feel like you shouldn't be able to say later that "forever" was true five years ago, but today it retroactively means a finite timespan.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#387
post #4

> "If you're over your storage limit for two years, Google may delete your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos," the company said. That's different from just deleting all your data because you're inactive. Which is it? Edit: it seems both. Here's the blog post (maybe this is a better link): https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-policy-update/

It's high time for somebody to make an appliance running open protocols that behaves like cloud applications but that is owned and hosted at one's home. Maybe it's what NAS is turning into, but open, and more broadly conceived: for email, chat, etc.

Thats what the helm appliance tries to do: https://www.thehelm.com/

If you search HN there is a quite interesting thread on it.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#388
post #371

Company giving you tons of free shit gives marginally less long lasting free shit. And its only if you're OVER the storage limit for an entire 2 years. And you can choose to pay for more storage if you'd rather keep the data. It's really not that bad... I think sometimes people hold Google to insanely high standards. They gave us so much free stuff that people get mad when they try to charge for it. Others say to mov…

Google has a slightly different problem. It has trained users into believing that shit should be free (and maybe supported by advertising) and over the years it has accumulated a significant chunk of users who either wholly believe in that mindset or are simply unable to pay for xyz reasons. Of course, people are going to raise hell when they start charging for something that was free for a decade. Google sowed the s…

This was before the rise of the GDPR - I think it's fair to say now they are getting their teeth into tech companies Google is realizing they can't rely on the same avenues to make money - they can't use data in the same way in 2020 as they could in 2010.

Cue a shift in business models as Apple et al (and probably Google itself with Android) limits what data can be accessed at any time.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work on a certain Google product and I remember thinking a petabyte was big when our raw content store crossed that milestone. Now Linus Tech Tips can put that much storage in a single box.

I remember about ten years ago when 40TB of usable storage was a mid sized five five figure investment. That’s nas territory now.

I remember a bit over 20 years ago when we had a full 19" rack full of storage. It was about 500 GB if I'm not mistaken.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People use email as a sneaky method of storage

How prevalent is that? Some nerds doing this is a drop in the ocean. Rather my bet would be on Youtube as the hungry beast that can't get enough storage. There's a loooooooot of videos that have single digit views yet need to be accessible at any time, instantly. Video is large. Doesn't youtube even keep the original file nowadays?

Sounds like we need a way to encode arbitrary data into video that can survive lossy compression. Youtube filesystem?
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