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I mean 237 TB of data is an excessive amount of data. The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation. Google is in the wrong on thei

I mean 237 TB of data is an excessive amount of data. The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation. Google is in the wrong on their response but, come on, let's be reasonable human beings and stop saying 'victim blaming'.

Nicksil 3y ago
>The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation. Why do you think this?
- boringg 3y ago
  Because they are using 237 Tb in an "unlimited" service from Google. And based on the mechanism they are using to pay for it (enterprise account with one seat) - they knew they had found a loop hole in google policy. (r/datahoarders) Seriously I'm all on board with giving Google the much grief that they deserve - but I also would expect someone claiming victim here to have more of a claim than abusing a "unlimited" account and getting mad about it. Yes 100% Google should be holding onto their data or offering them the ability to pay for the larger data tier - that part is BS. Get mad at the FBI for raiding you, get mad that you didn't think of another cloud service to store with or pay for an appropriate service (0.07$/TB [my rough calc] is dirt cheap to the point of suspect). I also have to assume that the individual, former anonymous hacker has some wherewithal to be suspect of 'unlimited' packages from large corporations. There's gotta be more to this story -- it smells off.
  - Nicksil 3y ago
    > 237 Tb in an unlimited service from Google So, not excessive. 237 TB does not exceed unlimited. What am I missing here? >they knew they had found a loop hole in google policy. What, exactly, is this loop hole?
  - cldellow 3y ago
    You talk about loopholes three times in this comment. > Because they are using 237 Tb in an unlimited service from Google Google's a trillion dollar company. A popular saying amongst Googlers is "I don't know how to count that low". They're used to big numbers. I work at a much smaller company. We are not a trillion dollar company. Even we, when offering an unlimited service, ask ourselves: "What happens if someone takes us up on this offer?" It's not a loophole, it's what he paid for. It's fine to stop offering an unlimited service. We did! My only beef with Google's conduct here is the 7 days of notice prior to deletion. I've followed Mike Masnick's reporting in other cases. He seems like an even-handed, fair journalist. I trust that he's not hiding the ball, nor letting the other journalist mislead him about the situation.
    - boringg 3y ago
      You should question the story a bit more. You think Google only gave 7 days? That seems super suss.
      - cldellow 3y ago
        Yes, why wouldn't I think that? As I said, I trust Mike Masnick. I also have past professional experience that leads me to believe Google does what's easiest for Google, not what's best for their customers. In one case, Google suspended a Google Certified Publishing Partner's GAM account for several hours with no notice. The partner had several years of history with Google, did $100M/year of revenue with them, and had an assigned Google rep who did weekly calls with them. Google reactivated the account, but only after significant disruption to the partner. I agree that it's good to be a critical consumer of news, but eh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably Google being blissfully ignorant of the impact they have on their users.
bakugo 3y ago
> The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation The victim is "taking advantage" of an advertised feature of the service they paid for, and has done nothing wrong. The fault lies entirely with Google for advertising unlimited storage, knowing full well that no such thing exists. Same with every other cloud storage service that once advertised unlimited storage. Just because someone who understands how computer storage works could probably figure out that it wasn't really unlimited doesn't make it not false advertising.
- boringg 3y ago
  They offered the service for 10 years and then sunset it.
klabb3 3y ago
Google offered unlimited storage, no? It’s reasonable to believe that they can do that since it averages out to a small amount per user, meaning most users overpay and the power users get peace of mind. Of course nothing is unlimited but a company like Google is perhaps best positioned in the world to offer that. And sure, if someone writes /dev/urandom at 1Gbit/s you could claim abuse, but for people working with video TBs of data is normal. 200+ is a lot but again averages out among users. In either case it’s extremely easy to avoid the word “unlimited” if you don’t intend to honor it for legitimate customers. It’s also reasonable that companies products change. And maybe it doesn’t last forever, fair enough. But if your product is backup, and you pull the rug with a 7 day grace period, of course people are going to be upset and warn others not to trust you.
Pikamander2 3y ago
> I mean 237 TB of data is an excessive amount of data. If it's excessive, then Google shouldn't have offered an unlimited data plan. They could have called it a 100 TB plan, but they chose to call it unlimited to make it sound better and then canceled it once people took them up on the offer. Regardless of whether that kind of action is legal, it's a shady business practice. For that matter, there's nothing wrong with Google discontinuing the plan going forward, but they had plenty of options for making the transition more fair and building consumer trust without hurting their bottom line too much. For example, they could have converted his account to a 250TB account and tripled its price, at which point he wouldn't be in immediate danger of losing his files but would be pressured into gradually moving to a more cost effective solution.
- boringg 3y ago
  They offered it for 10 years and then probably realized that people were taking advantage of the position and then tried to phase it out. Most likely with a lot of warning beforehand. I have a tough time believe that they didn't give any warning and then kicked them off the service.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    > taking advantage It was unlimited. If they didn't want it to be unlimited, it should have had a limit on it.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      It was unlimited and they retained the right to exit the contract. If someone wants to pay for unlimited duration unlimited storage they should find a provider who does that.
      - darkwater 3y ago
        They had it, it was Google.
  - 3y ago
m_0x 3y ago
237TB of unlimited data is a drop in the bucket.
sssilver 3y ago
What number is 237 in excess of? That is the number that Google should have advertised, instead of “unlimited”.
- thinkharderdev 3y ago
  I don't understand why people are stuck on the term unlimited here. It wasn't like he still had an unlimited plan but Google said "you are using too much data so we're going to delete it". They discontinued the plan so as of now he does not have an unlimited storage plan. I don't understand why this is complicated. Seems like he can either pay whatever it costs to store 237TB in Google Drive (probably a lot) or he can migrate to another storage provider. If he wasn't willing to pay whatever the cost for Google Drive is he should have started migrating his data when they discontinued the service.

Nicksil 3y ago

>The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation. Why do you think this?

boringg 3y ago
Because they are using 237 Tb in an "unlimited" service from Google. And based on the mechanism they are using to pay for it (enterprise account with one seat) - they knew they had found a loop hole in google policy. (r/datahoarders) Seriously I'm all on board with giving Google the much grief that they deserve - but I also would expect someone claiming victim here to have more of a claim than abusing a "unlimited" account and getting mad about it. Yes 100% Google should be holding onto their data or offering them the ability to pay for the larger data tier - that part is BS. Get mad at the FBI for raiding you, get mad that you didn't think of another cloud service to store with or pay for an appropriate service (0.07$/TB [my rough calc] is dirt cheap to the point of suspect). I also have to assume that the individual, former anonymous hacker has some wherewithal to be suspect of 'unlimited' packages from large corporations. There's gotta be more to this story -- it smells off.
- Nicksil 3y ago
  > 237 Tb in an unlimited service from Google So, not excessive. 237 TB does not exceed unlimited. What am I missing here? >they knew they had found a loop hole in google policy. What, exactly, is this loop hole?
- cldellow 3y ago
  You talk about loopholes three times in this comment. > Because they are using 237 Tb in an unlimited service from Google Google's a trillion dollar company. A popular saying amongst Googlers is "I don't know how to count that low". They're used to big numbers. I work at a much smaller company. We are not a trillion dollar company. Even we, when offering an unlimited service, ask ourselves: "What happens if someone takes us up on this offer?" It's not a loophole, it's what he paid for. It's fine to stop offering an unlimited service. We did! My only beef with Google's conduct here is the 7 days of notice prior to deletion. I've followed Mike Masnick's reporting in other cases. He seems like an even-handed, fair journalist. I trust that he's not hiding the ball, nor letting the other journalist mislead him about the situation.
  - boringg 3y ago
    You should question the story a bit more. You think Google only gave 7 days? That seems super suss.
    - cldellow 3y ago
      Yes, why wouldn't I think that? As I said, I trust Mike Masnick. I also have past professional experience that leads me to believe Google does what's easiest for Google, not what's best for their customers. In one case, Google suspended a Google Certified Publishing Partner's GAM account for several hours with no notice. The partner had several years of history with Google, did $100M/year of revenue with them, and had an assigned Google rep who did weekly calls with them. Google reactivated the account, but only after significant disruption to the partner. I agree that it's good to be a critical consumer of news, but eh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably Google being blissfully ignorant of the impact they have on their users.

bakugo 3y ago

> The 'victim' here clearly knows they are taking advantage of a situation The victim is "taking advantage" of an advertised feature of the service they paid for, and has done nothing wrong. The fault lies entirely with Google for advertising unlimited storage, knowing full well that no such thing exists. Same with every other cloud storage service that once advertised unlimited storage. Just because someone who understands how computer storage works could probably figure out that it wasn't really unlimited doesn't make it not false advertising.

boringg 3y ago
They offered the service for 10 years and then sunset it.

klabb3 3y ago

Google offered unlimited storage, no? It’s reasonable to believe that they can do that since it averages out to a small amount per user, meaning most users overpay and the power users get peace of mind. Of course nothing is unlimited but a company like Google is perhaps best positioned in the world to offer that. And sure, if someone writes /dev/urandom at 1Gbit/s you could claim abuse, but for people working with video TBs of data is normal. 200+ is a lot but again averages out among users. In either case it’s extremely easy to avoid the word “unlimited” if you don’t intend to honor it for legitimate customers. It’s also reasonable that companies products change. And maybe it doesn’t last forever, fair enough. But if your product is backup, and you pull the rug with a 7 day grace period, of course people are going to be upset and warn others not to trust you.

Pikamander2 3y ago

> I mean 237 TB of data is an excessive amount of data. If it's excessive, then Google shouldn't have offered an unlimited data plan. They could have called it a 100 TB plan, but they chose to call it unlimited to make it sound better and then canceled it once people took them up on the offer. Regardless of whether that kind of action is legal, it's a shady business practice. For that matter, there's nothing wrong with Google discontinuing the plan going forward, but they had plenty of options for making the transition more fair and building consumer trust without hurting their bottom line too much. For example, they could have converted his account to a 250TB account and tripled its price, at which point he wouldn't be in immediate danger of losing his files but would be pressured into gradually moving to a more cost effective solution.

boringg 3y ago
They offered it for 10 years and then probably realized that people were taking advantage of the position and then tried to phase it out. Most likely with a lot of warning beforehand. I have a tough time believe that they didn't give any warning and then kicked them off the service.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  > taking advantage It was unlimited. If they didn't want it to be unlimited, it should have had a limit on it.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    It was unlimited and they retained the right to exit the contract. If someone wants to pay for unlimited duration unlimited storage they should find a provider who does that.
    - darkwater 3y ago
      They had it, it was Google.
- 3y ago

m_0x 3y ago

237TB of unlimited data is a drop in the bucket.

sssilver 3y ago

What number is 237 in excess of? That is the number that Google should have advertised, instead of “unlimited”.

thinkharderdev 3y ago
I don't understand why people are stuck on the term unlimited here. It wasn't like he still had an unlimited plan but Google said "you are using too much data so we're going to delete it". They discontinued the plan so as of now he does not have an unlimited storage plan. I don't understand why this is complicated. Seems like he can either pay whatever it costs to store 237TB in Google Drive (probably a lot) or he can migrate to another storage provider. If he wasn't willing to pay whatever the cost for Google Drive is he should have started migrating his data when they discontinued the service.