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Google is also revoking the unlimited storage they granted to universities in the US. Many of my colleagues have terabytes (and 1-2 PB for some) of research dat
by remram 2y ago
Google is also revoking the unlimited storage they granted to universities in the US. Many of my colleagues have terabytes (and 1-2 PB for some) of research data or lab backups on Drive that IT is having a hard time relocating.
- shreddit 2y agoThis being a thing should have been pretty obvious. “Unlimited” never means unlimited in a literal sense. Even if phrased like so. And loosing actual backup files a whole different story…
- AlexandrB 2y agoSaying something and then pretending you actually meant a different thing is lying. It shouldn't be up to the consumer to understand the minutia of an industry and intuit whether "unlimited" actually means "unlimited".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- simondotau 2y agoUnlimited has never meant unlimited in its truest sense. It’s just that the consumer tends to have their own natural limits, whether that’s time, or attention span, or the human body’s ability to ingest liquid.
- scrps 2y agoWell the public at large seems to disagree with the corporate definition of unlimited. Also these unlimited storage accounts of consumers are stacked so high with data they are taxing the physical limits of google's storage pools? Methinks someone at google is angling for a promotion behind a good ole rug pull knowing people will pay rather than have to shift that data around. Consumers don't need langauge lessons they need to learn business is not to ever to be taken at their word without contracts & legal counsel involved. They are zero-trust players.
- simondotau 2y agoWhile your response is sincerely appreciated, it entirely misses the point. I'm not arguing definitions or "language lessons". I'm saying that any reasonable person understands that every single instance of "unlimited" with respect to the definition of a product or service is, with few if any exceptions, are not actually unlimited. Unlimited Coke refills at a soda fountain aren't unlimited. The human body is naturally limited by how much it can drink. Elide that natural limit and you still butt up against a person's stamina for doing objectively stupid things. Elide that limit and you're still limited by the amount of syrup on hand at that location.
- Grimeton 2y agoThere is a commonly and widespread accepted definition of the term "unlimited" If anyone uses it outside of that definition, it needs to be disclosed upfront. If that didn't happen, then it's "unlimited" as in the common widespread definition of the term. If you change the definition later, then you have changed your mind and look for a loophole to f people over. That's all there is to it. They said unlimited and now they're not keeping their word.
- etrautmann 2y agoSure, but if something seems too good to be true then it probably is. As an academic with hundreds of TB of data, I personally wouldn’t assume that some company would actually provide unlimited storage in perpetuity when the costs are clear and obvious.
- Grimeton 2y agoOf course I would. It's Google! They can do it! And obviously they did. How else do we explain people with petabytes of data on Google's drives when the term "unlimited" meant "30GB"?
- etrautmann 2y agoMy main point is that the costs of storage are fairly well known. One can estimate the cost to google of provisioning the datacenter class storage that a user with PB of data is using, and if your estimate of the situation is that it seems like that arrangement is likely to continue, then great. In my estimate, that seems unlikely unless there's a business case to be made for google (there certainly are some, like building familiarity in the system for academic trainees who may then go start startups or purchase storage from positions in industry).
- teo_zero 2y agoIf there's a place in the world I would expect to not have capacity issue, that's Google. If I were a judge, I wouldn't rule it's unreasonable for users to assume that it can store as many data as they produce, after having committed and advertised to do so.
- politelemon 2y agoAny idea what approach they're going to take? I wonder if Gsuite have an unpunished ability to do a snowball type export as a one-off.
- Dylan16807 2y agoFor those university accounts they did much worse than revoke "unlimited". They were making a big effort of cutting down to 100TB per university. With a moderate amount of students, that's less than the 15GB a random free personal account gets. A single SSD server (plus replicas) can hold much more than 100TB.
- sitkack 2y agoYou can get 500TB+ NAS appliances on ebay for 10k. Universities outsourcing this stuff WHILE STILL HAVING IT support staff at the same or higher levels is insane. Run your own schtuff people! At least when you outsource your supposed core competence, then cull your infra and your staff.
- Dylan16807 2y agoWhy do you assume universities didn't have fewer server admins while Google was actually delivering unlimited? Though one person can manage a lot of storage, and you still need to support all the users. So even if you don't get rid of people, you save a lot of money when you don't need to store petabytes. Moreso with every year you look back.
- sitkack 2y agoI am just getting butt hurt about how universities are wasting so much on administrators of all types while making services worse. Looking at you University of Washington! This is a systemic problem in our civilization right now. IT departments outsource their core competency to a vendor, spending more to deliver less while trumpeting new operational synergies only to have vendor fuck them over again, so instead of paying 2x for less, they are now paying 3.14x for 1.44x more less.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- betaby 2y agoSome USA universities literally have endowments in billions/year. Universities were the places where Unix and Internet thrived back. And now? Uh-oh hosting our own data is very hard problem. Ridiculous!
- oivey 2y agoWhy would they host their own data it Google said they would do it for free? If you’re in IT, how do you even get support for on prem storage if Google has used its monopoly position to provide that service for free?