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> It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. I didn't sense that they were bit

> It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. I didn't sense that they were bitter about it. But in both cases I do have some sympathy for the business. There is "unlimited" in the sense of what a regular average p50 user would consider reasonable ("every photo i've ever taken with my cellphone of my grandchild") Then there is "unlimited" for a professional p99 user("Every RAW file of every photo i've ever taken as a professional photographer") And then there is "unlimited" for a data hoarder p99.99 user ("Every movie i've ever torrented in 4k, plus multiple seasons of every TV show ever made") As a business you design your model to attract to the p50 customer so that Grandma doesn't have to worry about deleting photos, taking things too far, and losing something important. Unlimited is powerful here. The hope is that the p99 use case gets offset by the person who's paying for the service but barely using it. The p99.99 user? They're just a pain in the butt. You can't chase them away without also chasing away grandma (You can't say "Data cap of 1TB" - people have no idea how much data anything uses). So of course you tolerate them. But ultimately? They're the reason you go out of business. They're the reason Crashplan switched to B2B, and why Backblaze isn't making any money. Can't feel good.

Dylan16807 5y ago
I wonder if people would be scared away by a cap phrased in terms of entire hard drives. That would still allow some pretty heavy users, but it would stop the people trying to dump hundreds of terabytes onto the service.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
I understand exactly what you're saying. It's perfectly reasonable. However, it's not what companies are selling. They sell "unlimited". That's what their marketing always promises. Nowhere does it say "unlimited, but only if you're a normal everyday 50th percentile person". They always say it's "unlimited". So they should absolutely be obligated to keep their promise and deliver unlimited service to even the 99.9999th percentile users. That's what they sold consumers, that's what consumers should get.
- concinds 5y ago
  Having a hard cap could scare away average users who don't understand how much data they have, and just want a simple, set and forget solution. How is grandma supposed to know her kids' photos aren't "10TB"?

Dylan16807 5y ago

I wonder if people would be scared away by a cap phrased in terms of entire hard drives. That would still allow some pretty heavy users, but it would stop the people trying to dump hundreds of terabytes onto the service.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

I understand exactly what you're saying. It's perfectly reasonable. However, it's not what companies are selling. They sell "unlimited". That's what their marketing always promises. Nowhere does it say "unlimited, but only if you're a normal everyday 50th percentile person". They always say it's "unlimited". So they should absolutely be obligated to keep their promise and deliver unlimited service to even the 99.9999th percentile users. That's what they sold consumers, that's what consumers should get.

concinds 5y ago
Having a hard cap could scare away average users who don't understand how much data they have, and just want a simple, set and forget solution. How is grandma supposed to know her kids' photos aren't "10TB"?