4 ms·

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

by Nicksil 3y ago

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.
  - 3y ago
- 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.

>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.
- 3y ago
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.