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Crisis (!?) is a bit dramatic. Google response isn't correct but everyone here has there hands a bit dirty. Storing 237 Tb on an unlimited server - the indivi

Crisis (!?) is a bit dramatic. Google response isn't correct but everyone here has there hands a bit dirty. Storing 237 Tb on an unlimited server - the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system and probably should have been ready for some kind of remedy.

Nicksil 3y ago
>the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system Why do you think this?
- boringg 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Nicksil 3y ago
    >237 TB for free? What are you talking about? >Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account.
  - terminous 3y ago
    Are you seriously asking this question or are you completely disconnected from the dictionary? What does "unlimited" mean? No limits. If you don't intend for a customer to make use of unlimited storage, with no limits, then use the proper English word. Also, this was a paid subscription.
    - remus 3y ago
      I hate the 'unlimited' marketing too, but as a user it pays to engage your brain in these situations. Selling a service for significantly less than it costs to run is a risky business strategy, so best case you keep getting great value for some period of time and worst case it's going to change and you'll need to get outta there.
  - avazhi 3y ago
    Highly recommend reading the article again, slowly, until you fully understand the situation. This was a paid service until Google changed the terms; afterwards, Google claimed that the files would merely be read only (indefinitely), not deleted. After THAT, they then gave the user 1 week to deal with 250 terabytes. Read it again you understand that properly.
    - boringg 3y ago
      I did. I use the term free but it should "incredibly low cost". I accept the blame for my inaccuracy but my position doesn't change. 20$/month for unlimited data that works out to about 0.07$/TB for storage thats pretty damn close to free in my books. How much would a TB cost on S3?
      - wgjordan 3y ago
        The offer was unlimited storage at 5+ seats, but in any case, the subject is quoted in the article writing 'I paid Google a lot of money for a long time for a plan,' so it was absolutely not viewed as 'free' to them.
      - avazhi 3y ago
        I can only speak for myself in this thread, but my issue was your referring to something that was cheap as free, as if the customer was freeloading. Google is able to leverage probably the greatest economy of scale in the cloud industry (maybe Amazon is better, but that's it) and so its cost per gigabyte of storage is either the lowest or 2nd lowest on the planet. It can and does provide storage services at a very low cost to itself (hence its margins). It is able to provide services very cheaply and it is for that very reason that paying customers are attracted to it - and of course, even if a service is cheap, paying for a service creates a different relationship between the service provider and the customer than does a relationship where the customer freeloads. In my view, if this had been a free service the terms of which had changed, there wouldn't be the same scope for outrage. But this was a paying customer, even if he didn't pay as much as you think would have been reasonable - or would have been obtained - elsewhere in the market. Google voluntarily chose those prices for its unlimited plan for competitive reasons and in its own corporate interests. That's on Google, as was Google's subsequent unconscionable behaviour. In Australia, I suspect this sort of behaviour would provoke very close scrutiny by our antitrust and consumer protection regular, the ACCC. We don't seem to have the same problem with regulatory capture that the US does currently. At the very least here the consumer would have arguable claims under the Australian Consumer Law relating to consumer guarantees and misleading and deceptive conduct in trade or commerce.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    That is maybe 3600€ worth of HDDs at current prices. I would consider that a loss leader.
  - skywhopper 3y ago
    It wasn't free. He was paying for the "unlimited storage" plan.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    He's not even "abusing" the service like many people would think (storing movies and TV shows, etc). This is all his own data. Yes he has a lot of data. This is why one would pay for an unlimited plan.
- not_a_shill 3y ago
  >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.
  - jmd42 3y ago
    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.
    - not_a_shill 3y ago
      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.
terminous 3y ago
> taking advantage No. 100% wrong. If you advertise and sell "unlimited" then you should deliver unlimited. If you don't build in acceptable use limits into the contract, then that's your fault, not the customer's.
- licomo 3y ago
  OT, but this is why I am skeptical of Cloudflare right now. Am I right to be concerned?
  - andygeorge 3y ago
    you're only skeptical of CF now? They've been garbage for years in terms of service and support
    - licomo 3y ago
      It has just seemed like people are big fans of the "free, unlimited" plans here. I use a provider that is pay-per-usage personally, which seems more sustainable. Support is part of the cost that is rolled into that pay-per-usage fee IMO.
      - andygeorge 3y ago
        I've worked at multiple places that unfortunately paid for CF services (and support), and have consistently had trouble with them. And that doesn't include just general CF service instability for end users.
        JimDabell 3y ago
        Ditto. We got locked into a long-term Cloudflare contract and regretted it immensely. So much stuff that’s beta quality, broken promises, terrible support. Looks great on the surface, until you need to actually rely upon it.
  - skywhopper 3y ago
cochne 3y ago
I hardly think it's fair to say that they were 'taking advantage'. If Google says unlimited, should the typical person really expect that to be taken away? That's a really bad look for Google. "If we offer something that's good value to you, expect it to be taken away suddenly in the future." Those are not the actions of a company I would want to rely on.
- voakbasda 3y ago
  With modern connected devices, I absolutely do expect for features (or even total functionality) to be removed on a whim by the manufacturer. Cloud services are no different. Lesson being: do not rely on devices or services that rely on a third party. They absolutely will screw you; it’s only a matter of time. If you do not believe this, then I would say that you have not been around this industry long enough. There may be rare exceptions, but this should be your rule if you care about the longevity of your software and data.
  - llbeansandrice 3y ago
    You see why this is horrific UX and people have good reason to complain about it tho right? You can't expect customers to go into this as battle-hardened as their opponent.
    - Espressosaurus 3y ago
      People have excellent reason to complain about it. But we should still be prepared. If you don't own the hardware and software stack, you don't own the service.
  - layer8 3y ago
    You may be factually correct, but as a paying customer, this is not acceptable.
    - voakbasda 3y ago
      Of course it is not acceptable. But I imagine every company out there that has skin in this game would boldly taunt in reply: “whachha gunna do ‘bout it?” Sure, we could boycott. How often is that ever effective in this modern age? Is it ever, because I don’t think I ever heard of such outside of history books? Our lawmakers are corrupt and wholly in the pocket of those who would stand to benefit from perpetuating this shameful status quo. From my perspective, there ain’t damn thing we can do to fix it (or a thousand other problems), unless we are ready to start holding them accountable. I think that will take putting some of their heads on pikes.
resoluteteeth 3y ago
> Google response isn't correct but everyone here has there hands a bit dirty. Storing 237 Tb on an unlimited server - the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system and probably should have been ready for some kind of remedy. Google clearly made a mistake in offering an "unlimited plan" so it makes perfect sense that they're going to discontinue it, and offer 60 days before the data becomes read only. If it was just that, there wouldn't be any article. The fact that they regret offering an unlimited plan doesn't, however, give them the right to tell him that they're going to give him 60 days before the data becomes read only but it won't be deleted and then suddenly tell him that actually his data is going to be deleted in 7 days, which isn't sufficient time to transfer it elsewhere.
- imtringued 3y ago
  Yeah usually the thing about deadlines is that you should communicate them as harshly as possible, then let them slip when they do arrive. I.e. they want people off the service voluntarily and deal with the tiny fraction that refuses.
  - ajross 3y ago
    > Yeah usually the thing about deadlines is that you should communicate them as harshly as possible, then let them slip when they do arrive. Is this not exactly what has happened? He was clearly threatened harshly, and... the data isn't yet deleted?
    - danaris 3y ago
      No; the opposite happened. Google initially told him that there was no hard deadline for getting the data off—just that his drive would be read-only as long as it was over the limit. Then, 6 months later, they told him he had 7 days to get it off or it would be wiped.
      - ajross 3y ago
        Right, exactly. "He has 7 days or it would be wiped" is a threat, not a punishment. Was the data wiped or not? What are you willing to bet that we'll actually see a followup claiming the data was wiped? Almost certainly he's going to download the thing onto $3k of SSDs and get off the service, which is what everyone wants.
mmstan 3y ago
From the article: "Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account." I don't see how can this be seen as "taking advantage of a system".
- boringg 3y ago
  "Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account." Thats highly subjective to the point of meaningless.
  - deelly 3y ago
    Wait, so its his fault that he did not pay Google more? "Just in case" money?
    - layer8 3y ago
      He probably wouldn’t have been able to even if he wanted (barring using multiple accounts, which comes with its own problems, including an increased risk of Google taking it as a reason to shut the accounts down).
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    It was Google who set the price and service limit, not him, so I don’t think there’s any room here to argue that the price he was paying was unfairly low.
  - sllabres 3y ago
    Can you explain, why this is subjective/meaningless? Apparently he paid the amount that Google wanted for the unlimited service?
- not_a_shill 3y ago
  You do see but you're choosing to make an argument for the sake of "sticking it to MegaCorp" or something similar. Every single person who had these 100+ TB plans knew it was unsustainable. When you have that much data you know how much it costs for hard drives to store that much data. If the article had actually stated the amount the guy paid per month (what,$20-$60?) everyone would know that he should've known this was coming.
wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
Yeah Google made a mistake, being online so long, having a huge legal team. They should know there is 0.1 - 1% users to will conciously or unconciously misuse your system and drive your cost up. Better to have fair use limits from the start.
yetanotherloss 3y ago
Also they've been giving out these warnings for months. I'm sympathetic to the guy with the seemingly abusive legal actions from Fox but this storage problem did not just spring from nothing into the final crisis stage. We had to move a bunch of data off gdrive too, which did little for our opinion of Google's business customer support and was a PITA I didn't need, but the first warnings were in 2002 some time and we were nowhere near as egregious in usage as some of the/r/datahoarder crowd that had multiple petabytes hiding in the lowest cost Gsuite legacy pricing.
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>Also they've been giving out these warnings for months. That's not true though. They've been telling him that his account is in read-only state. Literally no mention anywhere is made about deletion of the account or data in it, until that very last email which gives him 7 days to move his data(which is unreasonable). If they said 6 months ago "your account is entering a read only state, if you don't go below your quota it will get deleted in 180 days" I'd consider this entire post to be a waste of space - but that's not what happened, and I'm very sympathetic to his situation.
  - yetanotherloss 3y ago
    There are dated messages in the article showing this going back to at least July 2023. So yes, your second case is closer to what appears to have been the sequence of events.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      Are there? Do you see any message from July 2023 explicitly saying that his data will be deleted with a deadline for such deletion?
    - icehawk 3y ago
      The deleted part doesn't come up until you have seven days. otherwise it says, verbatim: Hello, Your account was previously placed in a 14 day grace period because you exceeded your pooled storage limit. The pooled storage grace period expired on May 25, 2023 and your account is now in a “read-only” state. In this state services are impacted, including users not being able to upload new files or create new Google Docs, Sheets, Slides or Forms. Learn more about the features that are currently impacted. To prevent any further disruption to services, you can free up or get more storage. Sincerely, The Google Workspace Team If you just read that there is nothing mentioning it will ever be deleted.
rurp 3y ago
Wait, so Google lied about selling an unlimited storage plan and the response is to punish a person for believing them? Sounds to me like the wrong party is being punished here. Trust in Google might be near zero on HN these days but they still have a pretty good reputation with the general public. Expecting every non-technical user to see through the BS feels pretty wrong to me. I mean, what's the point of consumer protection laws if they don't push companies to be honest?
znpy 3y ago
No unfair advantage: if you say “unlimited” then you MUST expect and allow the occasional statistical outlier that uploads 237TB of data. Otherwise its false advertising. Edit: the real mistake here is trusting google, a company with a track record in messing up with their customers (from retired products to accounts frozen without any hope of appeal).
icehawk 3y ago
It's google, they're constantly talking about "big data" and "web scale" seems like a reasonable assumption for a layman to make.
- boringg 3y ago
  The individual wasn't a layman.
  - icehawk 3y ago
    How so, given that they're a reporter? I can't even find that they're a tech reporter given that: > The footage Burke obtained and shared with other journalists was obviously embarassing for the Fox brand. And that’s saying something, considering what Fox is willing to publish and air of its own free will and volition. A pair of videos featuring unreleased footage of a Kanye West interview allegedly illegally obtained by Tim Burke featured the rap star saying things even more abhorrent than his usual blend of sexism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories. They certainly don't seem like someone with an expert's understanding of cloud storage costs, do you have evidence to the contrary?

Nicksil 3y ago

>the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system Why do you think this?

boringg 3y ago
[flagged]
- Nicksil 3y ago
  >237 TB for free? What are you talking about? >Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account.
- terminous 3y ago
  Are you seriously asking this question or are you completely disconnected from the dictionary? What does "unlimited" mean? No limits. If you don't intend for a customer to make use of unlimited storage, with no limits, then use the proper English word. Also, this was a paid subscription.
  - remus 3y ago
    I hate the 'unlimited' marketing too, but as a user it pays to engage your brain in these situations. Selling a service for significantly less than it costs to run is a risky business strategy, so best case you keep getting great value for some period of time and worst case it's going to change and you'll need to get outta there.
- avazhi 3y ago
  Highly recommend reading the article again, slowly, until you fully understand the situation. This was a paid service until Google changed the terms; afterwards, Google claimed that the files would merely be read only (indefinitely), not deleted. After THAT, they then gave the user 1 week to deal with 250 terabytes. Read it again you understand that properly.
  - boringg 3y ago
    I did. I use the term free but it should "incredibly low cost". I accept the blame for my inaccuracy but my position doesn't change. 20$/month for unlimited data that works out to about 0.07$/TB for storage thats pretty damn close to free in my books. How much would a TB cost on S3?
    - wgjordan 3y ago
      The offer was unlimited storage at 5+ seats, but in any case, the subject is quoted in the article writing 'I paid Google a lot of money for a long time for a plan,' so it was absolutely not viewed as 'free' to them.
    - avazhi 3y ago
      I can only speak for myself in this thread, but my issue was your referring to something that was cheap as free, as if the customer was freeloading. Google is able to leverage probably the greatest economy of scale in the cloud industry (maybe Amazon is better, but that's it) and so its cost per gigabyte of storage is either the lowest or 2nd lowest on the planet. It can and does provide storage services at a very low cost to itself (hence its margins). It is able to provide services very cheaply and it is for that very reason that paying customers are attracted to it - and of course, even if a service is cheap, paying for a service creates a different relationship between the service provider and the customer than does a relationship where the customer freeloads. In my view, if this had been a free service the terms of which had changed, there wouldn't be the same scope for outrage. But this was a paying customer, even if he didn't pay as much as you think would have been reasonable - or would have been obtained - elsewhere in the market. Google voluntarily chose those prices for its unlimited plan for competitive reasons and in its own corporate interests. That's on Google, as was Google's subsequent unconscionable behaviour. In Australia, I suspect this sort of behaviour would provoke very close scrutiny by our antitrust and consumer protection regular, the ACCC. We don't seem to have the same problem with regulatory capture that the US does currently. At the very least here the consumer would have arguable claims under the Australian Consumer Law relating to consumer guarantees and misleading and deceptive conduct in trade or commerce.
- imtringued 3y ago
  That is maybe 3600€ worth of HDDs at current prices. I would consider that a loss leader.
- skywhopper 3y ago
  It wasn't free. He was paying for the "unlimited storage" plan.
- wvenable 3y ago
  He's not even "abusing" the service like many people would think (storing movies and TV shows, etc). This is all his own data. Yes he has a lot of data. This is why one would pay for an unlimited plan.
not_a_shill 3y ago
>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.
- jmd42 3y ago
  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.
  - not_a_shill 3y ago
    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.

terminous 3y ago

> taking advantage No. 100% wrong. If you advertise and sell "unlimited" then you should deliver unlimited. If you don't build in acceptable use limits into the contract, then that's your fault, not the customer's.

licomo 3y ago
OT, but this is why I am skeptical of Cloudflare right now. Am I right to be concerned?
- andygeorge 3y ago
  you're only skeptical of CF now? They've been garbage for years in terms of service and support
  - licomo 3y ago
    It has just seemed like people are big fans of the "free, unlimited" plans here. I use a provider that is pay-per-usage personally, which seems more sustainable. Support is part of the cost that is rolled into that pay-per-usage fee IMO.
    - andygeorge 3y ago
      I've worked at multiple places that unfortunately paid for CF services (and support), and have consistently had trouble with them. And that doesn't include just general CF service instability for end users.
      - JimDabell 3y ago
        Ditto. We got locked into a long-term Cloudflare contract and regretted it immensely. So much stuff that’s beta quality, broken promises, terrible support. Looks great on the surface, until you need to actually rely upon it.
- skywhopper 3y ago

cochne 3y ago

I hardly think it's fair to say that they were 'taking advantage'. If Google says unlimited, should the typical person really expect that to be taken away? That's a really bad look for Google. "If we offer something that's good value to you, expect it to be taken away suddenly in the future." Those are not the actions of a company I would want to rely on.

voakbasda 3y ago
With modern connected devices, I absolutely do expect for features (or even total functionality) to be removed on a whim by the manufacturer. Cloud services are no different. Lesson being: do not rely on devices or services that rely on a third party. They absolutely will screw you; it’s only a matter of time. If you do not believe this, then I would say that you have not been around this industry long enough. There may be rare exceptions, but this should be your rule if you care about the longevity of your software and data.
- llbeansandrice 3y ago
  You see why this is horrific UX and people have good reason to complain about it tho right? You can't expect customers to go into this as battle-hardened as their opponent.
  - Espressosaurus 3y ago
    People have excellent reason to complain about it. But we should still be prepared. If you don't own the hardware and software stack, you don't own the service.
- layer8 3y ago
  You may be factually correct, but as a paying customer, this is not acceptable.
  - voakbasda 3y ago
    Of course it is not acceptable. But I imagine every company out there that has skin in this game would boldly taunt in reply: “whachha gunna do ‘bout it?” Sure, we could boycott. How often is that ever effective in this modern age? Is it ever, because I don’t think I ever heard of such outside of history books? Our lawmakers are corrupt and wholly in the pocket of those who would stand to benefit from perpetuating this shameful status quo. From my perspective, there ain’t damn thing we can do to fix it (or a thousand other problems), unless we are ready to start holding them accountable. I think that will take putting some of their heads on pikes.

resoluteteeth 3y ago

> Google response isn't correct but everyone here has there hands a bit dirty. Storing 237 Tb on an unlimited server - the individual clearly knew they were taking advantage of a system and probably should have been ready for some kind of remedy. Google clearly made a mistake in offering an "unlimited plan" so it makes perfect sense that they're going to discontinue it, and offer 60 days before the data becomes read only. If it was just that, there wouldn't be any article. The fact that they regret offering an unlimited plan doesn't, however, give them the right to tell him that they're going to give him 60 days before the data becomes read only but it won't be deleted and then suddenly tell him that actually his data is going to be deleted in 7 days, which isn't sufficient time to transfer it elsewhere.

imtringued 3y ago
Yeah usually the thing about deadlines is that you should communicate them as harshly as possible, then let them slip when they do arrive. I.e. they want people off the service voluntarily and deal with the tiny fraction that refuses.
- ajross 3y ago
  > Yeah usually the thing about deadlines is that you should communicate them as harshly as possible, then let them slip when they do arrive. Is this not exactly what has happened? He was clearly threatened harshly, and... the data isn't yet deleted?
  - danaris 3y ago
    No; the opposite happened. Google initially told him that there was no hard deadline for getting the data off—just that his drive would be read-only as long as it was over the limit. Then, 6 months later, they told him he had 7 days to get it off or it would be wiped.
    - ajross 3y ago
      Right, exactly. "He has 7 days or it would be wiped" is a threat, not a punishment. Was the data wiped or not? What are you willing to bet that we'll actually see a followup claiming the data was wiped? Almost certainly he's going to download the thing onto $3k of SSDs and get off the service, which is what everyone wants.

mmstan 3y ago

From the article: "Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account." I don't see how can this be seen as "taking advantage of a system".

boringg 3y ago
"Burke said he paid Google “a lot of money for a long time” for an “unlimited” cloud storage account." Thats highly subjective to the point of meaningless.
- deelly 3y ago
  Wait, so its his fault that he did not pay Google more? "Just in case" money?
  - layer8 3y ago
    He probably wouldn’t have been able to even if he wanted (barring using multiple accounts, which comes with its own problems, including an increased risk of Google taking it as a reason to shut the accounts down).
- JimDabell 3y ago
  It was Google who set the price and service limit, not him, so I don’t think there’s any room here to argue that the price he was paying was unfairly low.
- sllabres 3y ago
  Can you explain, why this is subjective/meaningless? Apparently he paid the amount that Google wanted for the unlimited service?
not_a_shill 3y ago
You do see but you're choosing to make an argument for the sake of "sticking it to MegaCorp" or something similar. Every single person who had these 100+ TB plans knew it was unsustainable. When you have that much data you know how much it costs for hard drives to store that much data. If the article had actually stated the amount the guy paid per month (what,$20-$60?) everyone would know that he should've known this was coming.

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago

Yeah Google made a mistake, being online so long, having a huge legal team. They should know there is 0.1 - 1% users to will conciously or unconciously misuse your system and drive your cost up. Better to have fair use limits from the start.

yetanotherloss 3y ago

Also they've been giving out these warnings for months. I'm sympathetic to the guy with the seemingly abusive legal actions from Fox but this storage problem did not just spring from nothing into the final crisis stage. We had to move a bunch of data off gdrive too, which did little for our opinion of Google's business customer support and was a PITA I didn't need, but the first warnings were in 2002 some time and we were nowhere near as egregious in usage as some of the/r/datahoarder crowd that had multiple petabytes hiding in the lowest cost Gsuite legacy pricing.

gambiting 3y ago
>>Also they've been giving out these warnings for months. That's not true though. They've been telling him that his account is in read-only state. Literally no mention anywhere is made about deletion of the account or data in it, until that very last email which gives him 7 days to move his data(which is unreasonable). If they said 6 months ago "your account is entering a read only state, if you don't go below your quota it will get deleted in 180 days" I'd consider this entire post to be a waste of space - but that's not what happened, and I'm very sympathetic to his situation.
- yetanotherloss 3y ago
  There are dated messages in the article showing this going back to at least July 2023. So yes, your second case is closer to what appears to have been the sequence of events.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    Are there? Do you see any message from July 2023 explicitly saying that his data will be deleted with a deadline for such deletion?
  - icehawk 3y ago
    The deleted part doesn't come up until you have seven days. otherwise it says, verbatim: Hello, Your account was previously placed in a 14 day grace period because you exceeded your pooled storage limit. The pooled storage grace period expired on May 25, 2023 and your account is now in a “read-only” state. In this state services are impacted, including users not being able to upload new files or create new Google Docs, Sheets, Slides or Forms. Learn more about the features that are currently impacted. To prevent any further disruption to services, you can free up or get more storage. Sincerely, The Google Workspace Team If you just read that there is nothing mentioning it will ever be deleted.

rurp 3y ago

Wait, so Google lied about selling an unlimited storage plan and the response is to punish a person for believing them? Sounds to me like the wrong party is being punished here. Trust in Google might be near zero on HN these days but they still have a pretty good reputation with the general public. Expecting every non-technical user to see through the BS feels pretty wrong to me. I mean, what's the point of consumer protection laws if they don't push companies to be honest?

znpy 3y ago

No unfair advantage: if you say “unlimited” then you MUST expect and allow the occasional statistical outlier that uploads 237TB of data. Otherwise its false advertising. Edit: the real mistake here is trusting google, a company with a track record in messing up with their customers (from retired products to accounts frozen without any hope of appeal).

icehawk 3y ago

It's google, they're constantly talking about "big data" and "web scale" seems like a reasonable assumption for a layman to make.

boringg 3y ago
The individual wasn't a layman.
- icehawk 3y ago
  How so, given that they're a reporter? I can't even find that they're a tech reporter given that: > The footage Burke obtained and shared with other journalists was obviously embarassing for the Fox brand. And that’s saying something, considering what Fox is willing to publish and air of its own free will and volition. A pair of videos featuring unreleased footage of a Kanye West interview allegedly illegally obtained by Tim Burke featured the rap star saying things even more abhorrent than his usual blend of sexism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories. They certainly don't seem like someone with an expert's understanding of cloud storage costs, do you have evidence to the contrary?