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Exactly. Google has slowly but steady cuts the cap on the service. They've started with Google Photos which (I guess) is the 2nd most used personal service for

Exactly. Google has slowly but steady cuts the cap on the service. They've started with Google Photos which (I guess) is the 2nd most used personal service for Android users after Gmail, and they will continue to do so by putting more and more limits on storage, so it wouldn't be directly paying for Gmail but paying in general.

Gigachad 4y ago
A lot of the time you don’t even notice the limits. They started counting google docs to your storage limit when previously it was uncounted. But unless you are abusing the service as a file storage, it’s still effectively unlimited. There’s probably a 1% of users who use more than the other 99% added up and quotas cut down on that.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  If you use Google Photos for backup, you'll hit the free caps pretty quickly.
  - llampx 4y ago
    Exactly. Some members of my family have run into this in 2022, after I recommended Google Photos as an automatic backup for their phone a few years ago. They don't get Gmail when storage is full, something I thought would never happen with Gmail.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Just yesterday I decided to investigate why I was near my storage limit on Google. Google Photos turned out to be a major culprit. Some photos were connected to my blog--I use Blogger--but a bunch were backups from years ago that somehow got synced from my phone. But in spite of having thousands of email messages, Gmail wasn't taking up much room at all.
- stevage 4y ago
  Yep. I've been getting warnings for years that I'm at 92% of my capacity. Never seems to get any higher. No idea why.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    You may have synced photos at some point, perhaps unknowingly. Or you may have some large media files on Drive. There are mays to search for large files although Google doesn't make it especially easy or intuitive.
echelon 4y ago
I remember someone on HN pointing out that Google reserves the right to delete YouTube videos without cause in the YouTube ToS. It was posited that they may eventually begin to remove unpopular or unwatched videos to save on costs.
- djhn 4y ago
  But if they're not being watched, they don't consume bandwidth. YouTube's costs for hosting a video scale quite linearly with revenue derived from said video. Is storage really that expensive at Google scale that this would constitute a real cost saving measure after engineering overhead of implementation and PR backlash?
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Cost of storage and cost of storage with a somewhat dependable backup strategy are two very different numbers. Chances are this "delete without naming a reason" clause resolves precisely to videos that won't be missed by many can get relegated to available until taken by bitrot without Google losing face. Likely multiple stages downhill, from multiple site redundancy to single site but multiple hosts to multiple drives on a single host to single drive but still copied over if the drive reaches some scheduled EOL before of failure. Perhaps there's even a very last stage, available as long as that one drive is still powered up.
  - worldofmatthew 4y ago
    YouTube stores at least 7ish copies of every video (different resolutions) and people record higher quality footage than they used and people have moved more away from bitrate-light vlogs to bitrate-heavy gaming videos. And when you consider that hard drives have stagnated in price over the past few years, YouTube is doomed if it does not delete unprofitable videos. Unless prices to host content goes down, the whole thing becomes a sort of ponzi.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      For a video that is viewed rarely enough they could store one (replicated) copy instead of seven (replicated) copies. Or turn off replication for six of those seven resolutions.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
In addition, they've started collecting data _around_ gmail. You cannot sign up without a phone number now. They can absolutely do what they want with that phone number without breaking their promise to use your email for advertising. I think the article has a point, but is overselling it as bigger than it actually is.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  > You cannot sign up without a phone number now. I've found this varies. I've had to make a few new gmail accounts lately for various reasons, and only once was forced to add a phone number.

Gigachad 4y ago

A lot of the time you don’t even notice the limits. They started counting google docs to your storage limit when previously it was uncounted. But unless you are abusing the service as a file storage, it’s still effectively unlimited. There’s probably a 1% of users who use more than the other 99% added up and quotas cut down on that.

rippercushions 4y ago
If you use Google Photos for backup, you'll hit the free caps pretty quickly.
- llampx 4y ago
  Exactly. Some members of my family have run into this in 2022, after I recommended Google Photos as an automatic backup for their phone a few years ago. They don't get Gmail when storage is full, something I thought would never happen with Gmail.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Just yesterday I decided to investigate why I was near my storage limit on Google. Google Photos turned out to be a major culprit. Some photos were connected to my blog--I use Blogger--but a bunch were backups from years ago that somehow got synced from my phone. But in spite of having thousands of email messages, Gmail wasn't taking up much room at all.
stevage 4y ago
Yep. I've been getting warnings for years that I'm at 92% of my capacity. Never seems to get any higher. No idea why.
- ghaff 4y ago
  You may have synced photos at some point, perhaps unknowingly. Or you may have some large media files on Drive. There are mays to search for large files although Google doesn't make it especially easy or intuitive.

echelon 4y ago

I remember someone on HN pointing out that Google reserves the right to delete YouTube videos without cause in the YouTube ToS. It was posited that they may eventually begin to remove unpopular or unwatched videos to save on costs.

djhn 4y ago
But if they're not being watched, they don't consume bandwidth. YouTube's costs for hosting a video scale quite linearly with revenue derived from said video. Is storage really that expensive at Google scale that this would constitute a real cost saving measure after engineering overhead of implementation and PR backlash?
- usrusr 4y ago
  Cost of storage and cost of storage with a somewhat dependable backup strategy are two very different numbers. Chances are this "delete without naming a reason" clause resolves precisely to videos that won't be missed by many can get relegated to available until taken by bitrot without Google losing face. Likely multiple stages downhill, from multiple site redundancy to single site but multiple hosts to multiple drives on a single host to single drive but still copied over if the drive reaches some scheduled EOL before of failure. Perhaps there's even a very last stage, available as long as that one drive is still powered up.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  YouTube stores at least 7ish copies of every video (different resolutions) and people record higher quality footage than they used and people have moved more away from bitrate-light vlogs to bitrate-heavy gaming videos. And when you consider that hard drives have stagnated in price over the past few years, YouTube is doomed if it does not delete unprofitable videos. Unless prices to host content goes down, the whole thing becomes a sort of ponzi.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    For a video that is viewed rarely enough they could store one (replicated) copy instead of seven (replicated) copies. Or turn off replication for six of those seven resolutions.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

In addition, they've started collecting data _around_ gmail. You cannot sign up without a phone number now. They can absolutely do what they want with that phone number without breaking their promise to use your email for advertising. I think the article has a point, but is overselling it as bigger than it actually is.

nibbleshifter 4y ago
> You cannot sign up without a phone number now. I've found this varies. I've had to make a few new gmail accounts lately for various reasons, and only once was forced to add a phone number.