Google promises unlimited cloud storage; then cancels plan; then tells journalist his life’s work will be deleted without enough time to transfer the data
Meta: at the top of the article, "from the how-do-you-trust-a-company-that-can-delete-your-life's-work? Dept" -- what a blast from the past of slashdot days .... Does tech dirt have anything to do...
Meta: at the top of the article, "from the how-do-you-trust-a-company-that-can-delete-your-life's-work? Dept" -- what a blast from the past of slashdot days .... Does tech dirt have anything to do with /.?
On topic:
Google definitely has a huge problem with treating users, even paying "customers" as nothing more than lab rats: once an experiment is completed and they've gathered whatever data they need, we're taken out around back to the upstate farm to make friends with the shotgun.
And they're going to treat Gemini the same way: they'll convince us to use it, to put it in our schools, to use it for work etc.....and then when it gets bored of AI (after openAI folds for example) it'll unceremoniously pull the plug. Is it because they never had to run google like a company? Because they've been a behemoth since their early search engine war victory?
What are some of y'alls stories of paying for discontinued google products and services? I'll start with the two google home devices that sit unplugged on my shelf.
Techdirt was originally set up by Masnick using Slashcode, so that's why you're seeing some similarities between them... including all the comments by so many Anonymous Cowards at the bottom of...
Does tech dirt have anything to do with /.?
Techdirt was originally set up by Masnick using Slashcode, so that's why you're seeing some similarities between them... including all the comments by so many Anonymous Cowards at the bottom of every article. ;)
oh wow! I've been using that other site for so, so many years I hadn't actually branched out to look at the tech/science blogging scene for a long time. :) I've missed commenting as an Anonymous...
oh wow! I've been using that other site for so, so many years I hadn't actually branched out to look at the tech/science blogging scene for a long time. :) I've missed commenting as an Anonymous Coward.
OTOH, the comments there are typically a 50/50 split of edgelords/facists/trolls and people pathologically incapable of feeding said trolls. So, maybe see if the username is available here? :p
OTOH, the comments there are typically a 50/50 split of edgelords/facists/trolls and people pathologically incapable of feeding said trolls. So, maybe see if the username is available here? :p
I don't think Google has shut down anything I've ever paid them for. My Pixel sucked when I got it but it's good now. I've been using Gmail for almost 19 years now, so that has to count for...
I don't think Google has shut down anything I've ever paid them for. My Pixel sucked when I got it but it's good now. I've been using Gmail for almost 19 years now, so that has to count for something even though they've shut down so many of the more obscure apps that I've enjoyed.
Every fiber of my body is trained to avoid paying for shit online (partly thanks to google) but I wished the internet economy could just be me paying $x a month for Google...
Every fiber of my body is trained to avoid paying for shit online (partly thanks to google) but I wished the internet economy could just be me paying $x a month for Google Search/Docs/Drive/Youtube/Gmail and that being the source of their income instead of this bizarre dance where I'm getting everything for "free*" but with some shitty ad-riddled background functionality. The only reason we can have all this shit for free is silicon valley having destroyed the idea of a business in the classical sense, it's all just "scale, scale, scale", with a literal-Southpark-meme-"???" in the middle and a "profit" essentially either coming from tricking users into getting locked into a system by the end or advertising. I can't believe that this is the most efficient way for the online economy to run. It seems positively wasteful on so many ends. The idea that a business is built on trust is completely absent from google.
And paying usually just gets you an ‘ad-free’ experience where you pay, while they still collect everything on you to sell you poorly personalized ads elsewhere. There’s almost never an option to...
And paying usually just gets you an ‘ad-free’ experience where you pay, while they still collect everything on you to sell you poorly personalized ads elsewhere. There’s almost never an option to pay to not be the product. I dearly hope the ad scam bubble pops one day
Do your part! (now available on Firefox Mobile too...awesome) In their FAQ, they link to a Firefox's fork's justfication for banning their addon, which for someone whom does find all advertising...
In their FAQ, they link to a Firefox's fork's justfication for banning their addon, which for someone whom does find all advertising morally objectionable, is a checklist for why I use the addon.
It causes direct economic harm to:
People paying for the ads. They have to pay the click rate and not just the display rate. And they likely won't see any change from their increased ad spend because I don't know what I clicked.
Ad networks get more revenue, but they either have to pay out to publishers more, or devalue the payout of a click, which further disincentivizes relying on ads.
The people who put the ads on their stuff might see their clicks devalued. Sorry, not sorry. Let's work together to figure out a better way.
Without economic damage, the ad model will continue to grow.
It’s absolutely possible to do this (perhaps excluding YouTube) — you can pay for search, email, cloud storage, and office applications without trading personal information as well. You just won’t...
I wished the internet economy could just be me paying $x a month for Google Search/Docs/Drive/Youtube/Gmail and that being the source of their income
It’s absolutely possible to do this (perhaps excluding YouTube) — you can pay for search, email, cloud storage, and office applications without trading personal information as well. You just won’t be buying those services from Google.
Of course it’s possible from Google. It’s called Google Workspace and well worth the price even when you’re using it by yourself. It also works on your own domain instead of googles so you really...
Of course it’s possible from Google. It’s called Google Workspace and well worth the price even when you’re using it by yourself. It also works on your own domain instead of googles so you really own your email etc but without the hassle of hosting it.
That’s interesting but still a bit hard to trust for me. With “your own domain” you mean you can have an @businessname.com Email and it runs via the Gmail interface?
That’s interesting but still a bit hard to trust for me. With “your own domain” you mean you can have an @businessname.com Email and it runs via the Gmail interface?
Yes that's correct. There's a way to configure the mail servers for your domain to connect to Google, and then you effectively have @mydomain.com email running through Gmail.
Yes that's correct. There's a way to configure the mail servers for your domain to connect to Google, and then you effectively have @mydomain.com email running through Gmail.
Stadia I suppose. But they did in fact handle that well and refund everything. If there was more of that sort of goodwill it may not be so bad to invest. At least in non-enterprise stuff. I sure...
What are some of y'alls stories of paying for discontinued google products and services?
Stadia I suppose. But they did in fact handle that well and refund everything. If there was more of that sort of goodwill it may not be so bad to invest. At least in non-enterprise stuff.
I sure as hell wouldn't trust sensitive company information after reading an article like this. enterprise can easily have hundreds of terabytes of data in the portfolio, and having it shut down in a week is unaccetable.
Not exactly my story, but the (thankfully still up and running, not from lack of attempts though…) great killedbygoogle.com has been the single handed reason for me first not storing anything...
What are some of y'alls stories of paying for discontinued google products and services? I'll start with the two google home devices that sit unplugged on my shelf.
Not exactly my story, but the (thankfully still up and running, not from lack of attempts though…) great killedbygoogle.com has been the single handed reason for me first not storing anything important, and for a few years now, storing nothing at all with any Google service.
Google Inbox wasn't paid, but I would've paid for it. Have yet to find anything that can replace it. It feels silly that I can't find an email app that supports a unified inbox, has a simple way...
What are some of y'alls stories of paying for discontinued google products and services?
Google Inbox wasn't paid, but I would've paid for it. Have yet to find anything that can replace it. It feels silly that I can't find an email app that supports a unified inbox, has a simple way to snooze an email for X amount of time as a reminder, and has a relatively clean/simple interface to archive.
I'm currently using Fairemail and I appreciate that its open source, privacy conscious, and clears out ads/trackers. Despite all its customization, I can't get it to be what I want. The gmail app itself never got most of the inbox features, and I gave up after a while because you couldn't default to a unified inbox. A new app "Shortwave" has come out that has promise, but only supports gmail accounts. Its also only available on newer versions of android, which means I am currently unable to even test it (my phone is both completely functional and no longer supported...RIP).
I've had a few other email solutions on my todo list to try (Spark and Spike), but haven't managed to get around to them - leaving me far from inbox zero =(
Google Play Music. It became YouTube Music and I understand why Google did that (why have two licensing systems when you can just have one?), but it's still annoying. The user interface in YouTube...
What are some of y'alls stories of paying for discontinued google products and services? I'll start with the two google home devices that sit unplugged on my shelf.
Google Play Music. It became YouTube Music and I understand why Google did that (why have two licensing systems when you can just have one?), but it's still annoying. The user interface in YouTube Music is pretty crappy and it's quite clearly a service built out of normal, video YouTube. Tons of things that make sense on normal YouTube don't make sense on a music streaming service but Google doesn't seem to give a shit.
I use it since it comes with ad-free YouTube, but if they drop that, I'm 100% out. It doesn't handle playlists well, has worse functionality for music-filtering than iTunes had almost 20 years ago, has a shitty Android Auto interface (ironically), and just has a bunch of stupid little quirks that are annoying (for example, you can "thumb down" a song and it apparently has no real effect – it will continue to be used in randomly-generated radio stations).
And now they are killing Google Podcasts as a standalone app and dumping that into YouTube Music? Why? Is this really the only development YouTube Music gets—further app consolidation?
Genuinely curious: what do you asks it anymore and does it give you expected answers ? It was "working" as in, responds when you interact with it. But we unplugged it because it just wasn't...
Genuinely curious: what do you asks it anymore and does it give you expected answers ?
It was "working" as in, responds when you interact with it. But we unplugged it because it just wasn't behaving in ways it previously did, to the degree we were super fed up with having to shout "google stop" more than half the time.
jokes. Even if you try Bard today "hey tell me 10 jokes but don't repeat them" or "okay tell me 10 more but no repeats, only new", it doesn't know how to handle that. So "hey google tell me a joke" feature is 100% broken.
weather. It will insist we are in different locations. 100% broken.
trivia. Repeat problem like jokes. We know regular search results are at least half decent and when we first got google home it was great. Then it became somehow stupid. It's less frustrating and faster to search via keyboard on any one of our many devices. 50% broken.
news -- it used to be hey tell me the news from [media source], and then it became random sources and even very iffy sources. 100% broken.
Riddles - repeat problem like jokes.
Music. They switched to paid model and annoying ad mode. Broken.
"play ocean sounds" -- interruptions and random interjections. Broken.
weird connection problems -- sometimes would "spin" for 10+ seconds before responding -- frequently need to re-sync to network. or cross pick ups from the Home in the other room, or can't register voice, or whatever.
what else does it even do? I would never use it for shopping purposes. I also don't love having always-on listening devices at home.
These are all things that it used to be able to do!!! But I can only conclude, from decades dealing with google, that Home is now part of their already released and no longer care phase, and it won't ever get better again.
So, how are you even finding it usable anymore? Did you ever experience a dip in services and then it's back?
Ohhhhhhhhh, I see what you mean. Yes, the functionality has gone way down hill. I use ours for two things: 1.) Turning on/off lights 2.) Asking what the forecast for the day is We will sometimes...
Ohhhhhhhhh, I see what you mean.
Yes, the functionality has gone way down hill. I use ours for two things:
1.) Turning on/off lights
2.) Asking what the forecast for the day is
We will sometimes ask a question about an actor or something we read about in the news, and it's a coin flip whether it will even give us an answer. We almost hate doing that because then we might get a very unwanted "And by the way" response and have to start screaming "Hey Google, stop!" (like you said).
Ah yeah, ok I also see what their issues are. I only ever use it in the bathrooms as a timer and to play audio from my phone or to tell me the weather for the day. In the kitchen, we use it as a...
Ah yeah, ok I also see what their issues are. I only ever use it in the bathrooms as a timer and to play audio from my phone or to tell me the weather for the day.
In the kitchen, we use it as a timer, music player, and to tell us conversions when baking.
We don't use it for anything else. It also sometimes randomly starts talking when we didn't use the wake words, but if we lost all three, I wouldn't be sad, since I still have my phone and ipad, and can easily just get a bluetooth speaker for the three places I use the Google home. We only have them because we won them.
Same boat here...rage quite Google Home stuff after a particularily annoying battle of it interrupting mealtime. They went from utterly amazing technology, better than Amazon's in every use case I...
Same boat here...rage quite Google Home stuff after a particularily annoying battle of it interrupting mealtime.
They went from utterly amazing technology, better than Amazon's in every use case I tried, to giant nuisances that no longer did what they did well 2 years prior. I'm honestly flabbergasted that they managed to screw up the Home so bad.
Seriously, can't wait to tell my grandkids: Yea, we used to have excellent computer voice assistants in the home before your parent was born. Then somebody fucked it up and we've been chasing that...
Seriously, can't wait to tell my grandkids: Yea, we used to have excellent computer voice assistants in the home before your parent was born. Then somebody fucked it up and we've been chasing that dragon ever since.
I'm half-convinced it was a business decision to let it fall apart because there wasn't really anything to improve upon once they had multi-room audio groups and paging. It was a perfect product, and letting it remain perfect would kill the ability to sell new iterations.
This is a serious capitalism fail. Organizations can’t sit still and wait for a change that is truly an upgrade. Move fast and break things applies to their own awesome products.
This is a serious capitalism fail. Organizations can’t sit still and wait for a change that is truly an upgrade. Move fast and break things applies to their own awesome products.
I had the same thing happen, but it was due to an update with Google Assistant forgetting all my selections. You can configure your News sources in the assistant app, where you also need to...
I had the same thing happen, but it was due to an update with Google Assistant forgetting all my selections. You can configure your News sources in the assistant app, where you also need to configure your location or whatnot.
Not saying there's not a bunch of other stuff with issues... But most of it might configurable(??), just for whatever reason those settings are buried.
It's an interesting situation this person has found themselves in, since Google pretty clearly sold it as "unlimited storage", and that's what that person used it as, and now the rug is being...
It's an interesting situation this person has found themselves in, since Google pretty clearly sold it as "unlimited storage", and that's what that person used it as, and now the rug is being pulled out from under them -- first as a 6 month grace period of read-only access, and then a week at the end before the data gets deleted.
On the other hand, from the hacker news thread on it, estimates on how much this would cost to host on alternative storage services range from $5000 a month on S3, $1457 on rsync, $1428 on Backblaze B2, down to $250 to $900 a month on AWS' Deep Glacier. I'm not sure how much I can feel sorry for them for how much of a deal they were getting in the first place. It's still very shitty that they were sold unlimited and the rug was pulled, and that they now probably don't have enough time to back up their data, but that was one hell of a free lunch they got all that time.
It would, it turns out, be way cheaper and easier for them to have bought 250+TB of storage devices themselves and held the data themselves -- but it turns out they did that originally, and the FBI raided them over some "leaked Fox News footage" they had, and now they no longer have that local storage.
hosting in read-only is way way cheaper than an actively syncinig read-write cloud storage system. For all the money enterprise costs over the years Google could definitely keep that as read-only...
I'm not sure how much I can feel sorry for them for how much of a deal they were getting in the first place
hosting in read-only is way way cheaper than an actively syncinig read-write cloud storage system. For all the money enterprise costs over the years Google could definitely keep that as read-only for cheap.
But regardless of my feelings, a week notice is enterprise is a blink of the eye. It's absolutely unacceptable to give a business such a short notice to do any large move. That's where it really messed up, even before taking into account the math of it all:
250 terabytes in a week mean you need to be transferring about 1.5TB a DAY to get it all transferred in time. 67 GB an hour, 1.2 GB a minute, 20MB/s (or I guess as internet service advertises: 160Mbps) Again, assuming you have some handy 250 TB hard drive on hand and can get to work immediately. Depending on where the person lives, you may not even have physical access to such speeds, and even then it'll be very hard to suddenly ramp up such consistent traffic on a 200/400 Mbps connection. You transfer that much in such a short period and your ISP will likely hit you in the same way Google is now.
It's all just ludicious. If it was a month grace period, it would suck but be possible (almost. Assuming the ISP issues are resolved. Big if) A week is just unacceptable on multiple fronts.
All this has me wondering: what happened to 60-day and 90-day notice periods for business stuff? A week of heads-up is ridiculous, as you mentioned, but especially at this time of year! Half the...
All this has me wondering: what happened to 60-day and 90-day notice periods for business stuff? A week of heads-up is ridiculous, as you mentioned, but especially at this time of year! Half the people I talk to at work know someone who’s on leave for most or all of December, and for people who work part-time this might effectively be 48 hours notice.
If they at least had an option for Google to ship out a hard drive with your data (for some price) then it would be maybe okay…
The initial change was announced in 2020, I'm not sure about what communications came between then and the May 11th email in the article, but that email from May 11 says a 60 day grace period....
The initial change was announced in 2020, I'm not sure about what communications came between then and the May 11th email in the article, but that email from May 11 says a 60 day grace period. After that, they said 7 days until deletion.
7 days is not a long time, no, its definitely not enough for downloading 237.22TB of data, but it's definitely not the first they would have heard about the changes.
I also looked up what he might have been paying out of curious, and from what I can tell it would be about $276 annually for the "Google Workspace Enterprise Standard" plan.
Perhaps google should have thought of that before offering an 'unlimited' storage plan. It's obvious that anything sold as 'unlimited' or 'unmetred' is sold unfairly, because infrastructure costs...
estimates on how much this would cost to host on alternative storage services
Perhaps google should have thought of that before offering an 'unlimited' storage plan.
It's obvious that anything sold as 'unlimited' or 'unmetred' is sold unfairly, because infrastructure costs money to operate and maintain. Obvious to me, that is, and, I expect, to you. But I think people can be forgiven for not knowing that when a very large and well-reputed technology company claims it is fair.
Because a reasonable person understands that and advertising is allowed to be hyperbolic when a reasonable person would realize it's not literally true.
Because a reasonable person understands that and advertising is allowed to be hyperbolic when a reasonable person would realize it's not literally true.
But the reasonable person test would lead us to an interpretation that "unlimited storage" means "within the company's capacity", not "whenever the company says they're done".
But the reasonable person test would lead us to an interpretation that "unlimited storage" means "within the company's capacity", not "whenever the company says they're done".
They suddenly reneged when they gave a 7 day notice prior to deletion, after only previously indicating that he'd be unable to upload. Read-only mode doesn't imply a ticking clock.
They suddenly reneged when they gave a 7 day notice prior to deletion, after only previously indicating that he'd be unable to upload. Read-only mode doesn't imply a ticking clock.
They can change their other offerings. Existing plans damn well be grandfathered in. That's been pretty standard, for as long as I can remember. Being able to just arbitrarily change the offerings...
They can change their other offerings. Existing plans damn well be grandfathered in. That's been pretty standard, for as long as I can remember. Being able to just arbitrarily change the offerings of what someone is paying for, for the worse, is a relatively recent bullshit.
Cellphone companies were forced to honor their early 3g/4g Unlimited Data plans for existing customers, because that's what they were sold as. That's the reason all "Unlimited Plans" now also carry that fine print of "Up to 5GB of high-speed data, then rate-limited".
I paid for 2TB of Lifetime pCloud storage. My expectation, as a consumer, is that I get that 2TB for no extra cost until pCloud goes bust.
If they want to change the terms? They damn well better issue me a full refund and give me 6 months to migrate off.
Frankly, if it's advertised as Unlimited, I should be permitted to accept it as unlimited and recieve court damages when they decide it's not. Maybe companies will not be hyperbolic about infinite anymore.
And that's an easy way to lose the trust of a B2B relationship. Which is why you don't pull the same tricks on businesses as you would a regular cusomer .
And that's an easy way to lose the trust of a B2B relationship. Which is why you don't pull the same tricks on businesses as you would a regular cusomer .
Why should a reasonable person not construe "unlimited" to mean "without limit"? Advertising is an arms race anyways, so regulating the language and having them say "nearly unlimited" would have...
Why should a reasonable person not construe "unlimited" to mean "without limit"? Advertising is an arms race anyways, so regulating the language and having them say "nearly unlimited" would have the same effect.
If I sell a naked put, I have unlimited liability no matter how high the stock shoots up. I don't get to reneg the agreement (without consequence) because I don't have infinite money and "no...
If I sell a naked put, I have unlimited liability no matter how high the stock shoots up. I don't get to reneg the agreement (without consequence) because I don't have infinite money and "no reasonable person would think I do".
Why should companies be allowed to lie? Just because a “reasonable” person won’t believe what they say doesn’t make it acceptable. And why shouldn’t less intelligent or knowledgeable people be...
Why should companies be allowed to lie? Just because a “reasonable” person won’t believe what they say doesn’t make it acceptable. And why shouldn’t less intelligent or knowledgeable people be protected from such predatory behavior?
Because you can't base everything on the 1% otherwise society would come to a screeching halt. There's an actual limit to the degree you can foolproof anything or protect everyone from everything....
And why shouldn’t less intelligent or knowledgeable people be protected from such predatory behavior?
Because you can't base everything on the 1% otherwise society would come to a screeching halt. There's an actual limit to the degree you can foolproof anything or protect everyone from everything. It doesn't mean you don't try to do what you can, but you have to at least acknowledge that you can't actually stop it all.
Yes, you can. At least, for companies that are legal entities, not people, providing a good or a service under clear terms. We should nold companies to higher standards of unambiguous...
Yes, you can. At least, for companies that are legal entities, not people, providing a good or a service under clear terms. We should nold companies to higher standards of unambiguous communication because they only exist insofar that the legal language fomenting their existence is clear.
In the case for unlimited, it should be interpreted "as much as is possible within the physical bounds of reality."
If Google advertises "Unlimited drive space", but means 100GB, and Microsoft advertises "Unlimited OneDrive Space", but means 500GB, they're both lying and trying to gain marketshare based on that lie, Google more unfairly than Microsoft.
This was the claim made. So if a reasonable person defense isn't possible, then you're stating it has to apply even for unreasonable people. There's really nothing more to say to this if you think...
Just because a “reasonable” person won’t believe what they say doesn’t make it acceptable.
This was the claim made. So if a reasonable person defense isn't possible, then you're stating it has to apply even for unreasonable people. There's really nothing more to say to this if you think that is valid.
As for the specific claims about Google, I don't necessarily disagree that the specific incident here could have numerous issues with their communication both pre and post sale.
However the remark I was replying to was clearly stated more general in nature, which is because the comment it was replying to was also general about the nature of advertising, not about this specific case. So you're introducing specific elements of the subject into a conversation that had broadened to general discussion and taking remarks that were made generally and applying them to one specific situation, that isn't an accurate characterization of those remarks.
This exchange only further demonstrates one of the problems in trying to address every single interpretation, which is that there's no language you can use that people can't pick apart. Just because you're a big tech company doesn't change the nature of language, and what's worse, the only way you can remedy this is by making 10,000 page terms of service that no one has time to read in an attempt to force the language to be unambiguous, which actually makes it less accessible to everyone.
Prohibiting outright lying in ads can hardly be characterized as placing an undue burden on anyone. I doubt that such a prohibition would cause society to come to a screeching halt.
Prohibiting outright lying in ads can hardly be characterized as placing an undue burden on anyone. I doubt that such a prohibition would cause society to come to a screeching halt.
Sometimes it's not even hyperbolic but something can be unlimited in the service but could be considered implied understanding that it's constrained to one person or some other constraint of...
Sometimes it's not even hyperbolic but something can be unlimited in the service but could be considered implied understanding that it's constrained to one person or some other constraint of realistic usage. I get that using the word "constraint" to describe unlimited sounds a bit like an oxymoron, but that's language for you.
For example, Gmail could offer unlimited emails within the expectation that you're an actual person who is just manually typing up and sending out emails, until someone comes along and decides to automate sending emails beyond the rate of what an individual person could realistically send emails at. So would Gmail be hyperbolic to advertise unlimited emails? Well nowadays that would probably not fly because there's lots of automation in things and even the average person has some tools at their disposal to automate some things, but perhaps if such an offering was made 15 years ago or something it could have been considered a reasonable thing for people to assume it implied regular human usage and not automated usage. To the average person who had no access to any type of automation, it is possible they could have truly offered unlimited emails to those people.
Now it's another thing to offer unlimited storage and maybe argue that the average person only has 1TB of data so unlimited would serve them well and its other people abusing it, because that's not accounting for that person pushing the boundaries of what they could save that is within their capabilities, it's just taking into account their common behavior. I think that type of advertising would be more hyperbolic and there's not really a scenario where they are offering unlimited to anyone, they're just expecting that most people won't have any reason to try to use it. In this scenario, the person using 1TB and the person using 1PB could be using the same methods of uploading the data, just the person doing 1PB could be spending far more of their time uploading or managing this data than the person who has only 1TB.
well, given that your email is bound to your drive storage now and that both my accounts have been pestering me on running out of space, yes. It would be hyperbolic. 5GB casually is nothing in the...
For example, Gmail could offer unlimited emails within the expectation that you're an actual person who is just manually typing up and sending out emails, until someone comes along and decides to automate sending emails beyond the rate of what an individual person could realistically send emails at. So would Gmail be hyperbolic to advertise unlimited emails?
well, given that your email is bound to your drive storage now and that both my accounts have been pestering me on running out of space, yes. It would be hyperbolic. 5GB casually is nothing in the internet age for an active user, and I guess even my 100GB account is getting close (not because of email mind you, but it now impacts my ability to email).
It may be plenty in 2005, but this reminds me of the infamous "640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody."*. If you're gonna promise "unlimited", it should at least have an asterisk on it with some fine print for the power users who may be the most active pain points of your business. Nothing is infinite, nothing is forever.
*and to practice what I preach, I will note that Gates denies ever saying this quote and there is no strong proof linking it to him. But to quote someone else on the topic:
"Yet despite Gates's convincing denial, the quote is unlikely to die," Fallows wrote. "It's too convenient an expression of the computer industry's sense that no one can be sure what will happen next."
That's not really relevant to the example I provided because it was hypothetical. It was only meant to illustrate the dynamics of how you can word something to mean unlimited and actually mean it...
well, given that your email is bound to your drive storage now and that both my accounts have been pestering me on running out of space, yes. It would be hyperbolic.
That's not really relevant to the example I provided because it was hypothetical. It was only meant to illustrate the dynamics of how you can word something to mean unlimited and actually mean it while still there being some underlying constraint.
If you're gonna promise "unlimited", it should at least have an asterisk on it with some fine print for the power users who may be the most active pain points of your business.
I'd agree that asterisks with fine print need to be utilized more often, however one must consider that you can't account for every little edge case by adding 50 notes to every advertisement or headline like [1][2][3] etc. and inevitably some of it probably gets buried in some long terms of service document or something.
I also think that there's certainly cases to argue that using "unlimited" or oversubscribing shouldn't be allowed, but I don't think it's that simple to eliminate all of those entirely. I wouldn't doubt if my ISP is oversubscribing by offering multi gigabit per second plans to every single person, like if every single person decided to take them up on it and fully utilize it, they probably couldn't actually meet what they offered. Yet it's also extremely unlikely that would happen, and in the meantime it means I get better speeds than if they were constrained to only offering what was possible if every single person took them up on the offer.
I felt it was important to mention because back then I could believe 5GB was "unlimited". In the days where it was only email and your emails had 25MB attachment limits. There is certainly room to...
That's not really relevant to the example I provided because it was hypothetical
I felt it was important to mention because back then I could believe 5GB was "unlimited". In the days where it was only email and your emails had 25MB attachment limits. There is certainly room to suggest that the worst case 200 attachments if you were attaching to every email the max size can be "unlimited", but they did away with that recently. I wouldn't call it a rug pull, but it does feel like the deal has been slightly changed.
however one must consider that you can't account for every little edge case by adding 50 notes to every advertisement or headline like [1][2][3] etc.
of course not. That's what the ToS are for. But I do believe that those asterisks should take into account constratints when advertising "unlimited" or "free", if it is in fact limited or constrained to a certain time of day. However, I guess it's not a new phenomenon for advertisement to push the boundaries of lyinig, so I'm probably treading familiar ground here.
I wouldn't doubt if my ISP is oversubscribing by offering multi gigabit per second plans to every single person, like if every single person decided to take them up on it and fully utilize it, they probably couldn't actually meet what they offered. Yet it's also extremely unlikely that would happen, and in the meantime it means I get better speeds than if they were constrained to only offering what was possible if every single person took them up on the offer.
yeah, ToS are to deal with the edge cases. But the edge cases tend to be the most "rowdy" customers, almost by definition. They advertise to the 99% and can sweep the 1% under the rug as they grumble away and their friends say "what? it's fine for me, I got plenty of space/time/budget left".
I feel if you can't deal with that, then it's just not a good business. Customer Service doesn't tend to get calls from 99% of customers either, and if they did I hope the solution isn't to shut down CS.
For all intents and purposes, you can pretend I said "XYZ123mail" instead of Gmail, then we wouldn't be talking about their 5GB storage or anything similar. Of course you could expand the scope to...
I felt it was important to mention because back then I could believe 5GB was "unlimited". In the days where it was only email and your emails had 25MB attachment limits. There is certainly room to suggest that the worst case 200 attachments if you were attaching to every email the max size can be "unlimited", but they did away with that recently. I wouldn't call it a rug pull, but it does feel like the deal has been slightly changed.
For all intents and purposes, you can pretend I said "XYZ123mail" instead of Gmail, then we wouldn't be talking about their 5GB storage or anything similar. Of course you could expand the scope to consider what else unlimited means, like attachments or adding images into the email etc. but the point was simply to prove how not every mention of unlimited means they're being hyperbolic or lying, there's possibilities where unlimited with some reasonably implied constraints is actually an unlimited offering for the vast majority it applies to.
Now it is true that as technology changes and behaviors of people evolve that often times those claims can become outdated, but you can't expect people to predict the future in terms of what elements change and what ones don't. Some people didn't consider upload speed important for awhile until some of these additional services started cropping up or when certain technology became more available. Home surveillance systems were more of a niche, and they're a lot more popular now, and happens to be one thing that expands the need for more upload speed. Streaming on Twitch wasn't always a thing if you go back far enough but now it is, and needs upload speed. Yet there's a thousand other things that people probably said we wouldn't need and those might still be as true today as they may have been 10-20-30 years ago at any point someone may have said them. In some cases, those "unlimited" offerings that end up changing over time might give people the chance to explore new things that they wouldn't have otherwise and increases demand to the point it outstrips capacity, but that's not necessarily a bad thing that the "unlimited" became outdated.
Of course the challenge is that sometimes it's hard to tell when companies are doing things because of technical limitations or because of greed. It's widely believed that Comcast abuses their market position to implement their bogus 1TB per month bandwidth cap for completely non-technical reasons. Of course customers should be upset about that because it isn't based on any technical limitations and it's just artificial scarcity because they have no competition due to effective infrastructure monopolies in some areas.
sure, anyone can do it. But since the subject is Google, I felt it pertinent to show yet another example of "it used to be but now isnt because Google". I don't. I just hope their ad terminology...
For all intents and purposes, you can pretend I said "XYZ123mail" instead of Gmail, then we wouldn't be talking about their 5GB storage or anything similar.
sure, anyone can do it. But since the subject is Google, I felt it pertinent to show yet another example of "it used to be but now isnt because Google".
but you can't expect people to predict the future in terms of what elements change and what ones don't.
I don't. I just hope their ad terminology changes with the time. The sad part is that it usually doesn't, which is annoying and leads to that rug pull feeling. Sometimes it's out of necessity, sometimes simply out of penny pinching.
Of course the challenge is that sometimes it's hard to tell when companies are doing things because of technical limitations or because of greed.
The latter point of penny pinching is the much more dangerous practice and exactly how so many of the largest tech industries rose to prominice, which is why these days it does feel more like "greed:. The so called "embrace, extend, extinguish". By the time the "extinguish" comes, they are already so ingrained that it becomes hard not to accept their terms.
And it's hard not to feel it for Google. their earnings call had them post a profit of $266m dollars. keeping a few thousand servers read-only for a few years as users migrate out of their false advertisement wouldn't kill the company. That's what makes it feel greedy.
I'd hope that regulations can catch that before the fact, but tech in particular does seem to move at a breakneck pace. They are usually off to the next frontier by the time regulations try them on the last decade.
Same as "all you can eat buffet". They advertise on the premise that 99% of people will not even come close to eating it all. I imagine the majority won't even get their entry's worth but are...
Same as "all you can eat buffet". They advertise on the premise that 99% of people will not even come close to eating it all. I imagine the majority won't even get their entry's worth but are brought in by the "promise".
Ofc, the 1% in this case get kicked out at best because the house always wins. Tech isn't any different in that regard.
These days I wouldn't be surprised if the prices of such buffets are close to or beyond such limits. It was certainly feasible to "beat the buffet" 20 years ago, though.
These days I wouldn't be surprised if the prices of such buffets are close to or beyond such limits. It was certainly feasible to "beat the buffet" 20 years ago, though.
I had to make a decision last week on whether to use Google or Amazon’s managed kubernetes. Even though it’s Google’s software I don’t trust their hosting. So AWS was my choice.
I had to make a decision last week on whether to use Google or Amazon’s managed kubernetes. Even though it’s Google’s software I don’t trust their hosting. So AWS was my choice.
The first email could have been clearer but what exactly did the person think would happen after the end of the "60 day grace period"? As if Google would continue to store their 200tb+ for ever.
The first email could have been clearer but what exactly did the person think would happen after the end of the "60 day grace period"? As if Google would continue to store their 200tb+ for ever.
That they'd have more than a week's notice before it was all gone? You can store stuff read-only for much chewer than a dynamic storage. Google probably had/has several enterprise services with...
That they'd have more than a week's notice before it was all gone? You can store stuff read-only for much chewer than a dynamic storage. Google probably had/has several enterprise services with even more data.
I'm sure he was already transferring some of it, but the whole FBI raid on his house in retaliation from Fox News probably put a wrench in his plans. 4th amendment lawsuits are probably a big distraction from what a reasonable person would have already done.
Really hope this problem is solved. Hope I get to access my childhood email again one day lmfao. I never understood how we all tolerated this sort of behavior.
Really hope this problem is solved. Hope I get to access my childhood email again one day lmfao. I never understood how we all tolerated this sort of behavior.
Techdirt was originally running the same software ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_(software) ), which by default has a "Department" field for each story. Definitely brings back some memories.
Does tech dirt have anything to do with /.?
Techdirt was originally running the same software ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_(software) ), which by default has a "Department" field for each story. Definitely brings back some memories.
My strategies for avoiding this problem are: Always keep a local copy of cloud data. Lately z this is a Synology NAS with no-deletes one-way sync for google drive and dropbox. Use domains I own...
My strategies for avoiding this problem are:
Always keep a local copy of cloud data. Lately z this is a Synology NAS with no-deletes one-way sync for google drive and dropbox.
Use domains I own for email or hosting so I'm never tied to a platform. I've had the same email address ever since connecting my domain to yahoo mail in 2001, but gone through 5 or 6 providers since then.
Yeah, this is an exceptional case where the 3 points of failure all failed in (relatively) short succession. I guess the "lesson" is to make sure your local server isn't also in the same location...
Yeah, this is an exceptional case where the 3 points of failure all failed in (relatively) short succession. I guess the "lesson" is to make sure your local server isn't also in the same location as your hard drive in case your 4th amendment rights are violated.
It's kinda weird how this piece is making Google out to be the bad guys, when it seems more like it's the FBI who are the biggest dickheads. I guess it makes some sense, considering this is a blog...
It's kinda weird how this piece is making Google out to be the bad guys, when it seems more like it's the FBI who are the biggest dickheads.
I guess it makes some sense, considering this is a blog about tech, not civil rights. Still, it's as though someone burned down this guy's house, and instead of being angry at the arsonist, he's getting huffy at the manager of the hotel he stays at afterward because she evicted him from the room for non-payment.
Yeah, in a vacuum it does feel weird. google is at fault but the real issue here is the FBI ruining the very advice most people give on storing backups. Main thing is that that story was some 6...
Yeah, in a vacuum it does feel weird. google is at fault but the real issue here is the FBI ruining the very advice most people give on storing backups.
Main thing is that that story was some 6 months ago and AFAIK, the journalist affected has long since gotten a lawsuit started about it. It's a slow process but there isn't much for news to report on except reminding the user of the context.
As the article points out, the journalist in question could not have reasonably done the first: the FBI has seized all of his local storage. While officially, he hasn't 'lost' that data, and...
As the article points out, the journalist in question could not have reasonably done the first: the FBI has seized all of his local storage. While officially, he hasn't 'lost' that data, and they're officially obligated to give it back to him at some point in the future. even if he had any backups, it's unlikely he'll see any of them for the next few years.
Meta: at the top of the article, "from the how-do-you-trust-a-company-that-can-delete-your-life's-work? Dept" -- what a blast from the past of slashdot days .... Does tech dirt have anything to do with /.?
On topic:
Google definitely has a huge problem with treating users, even paying "customers" as nothing more than lab rats: once an experiment is completed and they've gathered whatever data they need, we're taken out around back to the upstate farm to make friends with the shotgun.
And they're going to treat Gemini the same way: they'll convince us to use it, to put it in our schools, to use it for work etc.....and then when it gets bored of AI (after openAI folds for example) it'll unceremoniously pull the plug. Is it because they never had to run google like a company? Because they've been a behemoth since their early search engine war victory?
What are some of y'alls stories of paying for discontinued google products and services? I'll start with the two google home devices that sit unplugged on my shelf.
Techdirt was originally set up by Masnick using Slashcode, so that's why you're seeing some similarities between them... including all the comments by so many Anonymous Cowards at the bottom of every article. ;)
oh wow! I've been using that other site for so, so many years I hadn't actually branched out to look at the tech/science blogging scene for a long time. :) I've missed commenting as an Anonymous Coward.
OTOH, the comments there are typically a 50/50 split of edgelords/facists/trolls and people pathologically incapable of feeding said trolls. So, maybe see if the username is available here? :p
I don't think Google has shut down anything I've ever paid them for. My Pixel sucked when I got it but it's good now. I've been using Gmail for almost 19 years now, so that has to count for something even though they've shut down so many of the more obscure apps that I've enjoyed.
Every fiber of my body is trained to avoid paying for shit online (partly thanks to google) but I wished the internet economy could just be me paying $x a month for Google Search/Docs/Drive/Youtube/Gmail and that being the source of their income instead of this bizarre dance where I'm getting everything for "free*" but with some shitty ad-riddled background functionality. The only reason we can have all this shit for free is silicon valley having destroyed the idea of a business in the classical sense, it's all just "scale, scale, scale", with a literal-Southpark-meme-"???" in the middle and a "profit" essentially either coming from tricking users into getting locked into a system by the end or advertising. I can't believe that this is the most efficient way for the online economy to run. It seems positively wasteful on so many ends. The idea that a business is built on trust is completely absent from google.
And paying usually just gets you an ‘ad-free’ experience where you pay, while they still collect everything on you to sell you poorly personalized ads elsewhere. There’s almost never an option to pay to not be the product. I dearly hope the ad scam bubble pops one day
Do your part!
(now available on Firefox Mobile too...awesome)
In their FAQ, they link to a Firefox's fork's justfication for banning their addon, which for someone whom does find all advertising morally objectionable, is a checklist for why I use the addon.
It causes direct economic harm to:
Without economic damage, the ad model will continue to grow.
It’s absolutely possible to do this (perhaps excluding YouTube) — you can pay for search, email, cloud storage, and office applications without trading personal information as well. You just won’t be buying those services from Google.
Of course it’s possible from Google. It’s called Google Workspace and well worth the price even when you’re using it by yourself. It also works on your own domain instead of googles so you really own your email etc but without the hassle of hosting it.
https://workspace.google.com @nothis
Only caveat is it doesn’t officially include YouTube but you can pay for YouTube premium separately.
I pay for both, and have multiple Google workspace accounts in fact. Very happy with it and it is indeed a healthier model than freemium.
That’s interesting but still a bit hard to trust for me. With “your own domain” you mean you can have an @businessname.com Email and it runs via the Gmail interface?
Correct. You pay per user but you have unlimited aliases and groups.
A lot of businesses large and small trust it. What do you not trust exactly?
Yes that's correct. There's a way to configure the mail servers for your domain to connect to Google, and then you effectively have @mydomain.com email running through Gmail.
Well, maybe not directly. Kagi uses google data (that they buy).
Stadia I suppose. But they did in fact handle that well and refund everything. If there was more of that sort of goodwill it may not be so bad to invest. At least in non-enterprise stuff.
I sure as hell wouldn't trust sensitive company information after reading an article like this. enterprise can easily have hundreds of terabytes of data in the portfolio, and having it shut down in a week is unaccetable.
Not exactly my story, but the (thankfully still up and running, not from lack of attempts though…) great killedbygoogle.com has been the single handed reason for me first not storing anything important, and for a few years now, storing nothing at all with any Google service.
Google Inbox wasn't paid, but I would've paid for it. Have yet to find anything that can replace it. It feels silly that I can't find an email app that supports a unified inbox, has a simple way to snooze an email for X amount of time as a reminder, and has a relatively clean/simple interface to archive.
I'm currently using Fairemail and I appreciate that its open source, privacy conscious, and clears out ads/trackers. Despite all its customization, I can't get it to be what I want. The gmail app itself never got most of the inbox features, and I gave up after a while because you couldn't default to a unified inbox. A new app "Shortwave" has come out that has promise, but only supports gmail accounts. Its also only available on newer versions of android, which means I am currently unable to even test it (my phone is both completely functional and no longer supported...RIP).
I've had a few other email solutions on my todo list to try (Spark and Spike), but haven't managed to get around to them - leaving me far from inbox zero =(
Google Play Music. It became YouTube Music and I understand why Google did that (why have two licensing systems when you can just have one?), but it's still annoying. The user interface in YouTube Music is pretty crappy and it's quite clearly a service built out of normal, video YouTube. Tons of things that make sense on normal YouTube don't make sense on a music streaming service but Google doesn't seem to give a shit.
I use it since it comes with ad-free YouTube, but if they drop that, I'm 100% out. It doesn't handle playlists well, has worse functionality for music-filtering than iTunes had almost 20 years ago, has a shitty Android Auto interface (ironically), and just has a bunch of stupid little quirks that are annoying (for example, you can "thumb down" a song and it apparently has no real effect – it will continue to be used in randomly-generated radio stations).
And now they are killing Google Podcasts as a standalone app and dumping that into YouTube Music? Why? Is this really the only development YouTube Music gets—further app consolidation?
I have an OG Google Home that still works, did yours stop working?
Genuinely curious: what do you asks it anymore and does it give you expected answers ?
It was "working" as in, responds when you interact with it. But we unplugged it because it just wasn't behaving in ways it previously did, to the degree we were super fed up with having to shout "google stop" more than half the time.
jokes. Even if you try Bard today "hey tell me 10 jokes but don't repeat them" or "okay tell me 10 more but no repeats, only new", it doesn't know how to handle that. So "hey google tell me a joke" feature is 100% broken.
weather. It will insist we are in different locations. 100% broken.
trivia. Repeat problem like jokes. We know regular search results are at least half decent and when we first got google home it was great. Then it became somehow stupid. It's less frustrating and faster to search via keyboard on any one of our many devices. 50% broken.
news -- it used to be hey tell me the news from [media source], and then it became random sources and even very iffy sources. 100% broken.
Riddles - repeat problem like jokes.
Music. They switched to paid model and annoying ad mode. Broken.
"play ocean sounds" -- interruptions and random interjections. Broken.
weird connection problems -- sometimes would "spin" for 10+ seconds before responding -- frequently need to re-sync to network. or cross pick ups from the Home in the other room, or can't register voice, or whatever.
what else does it even do? I would never use it for shopping purposes. I also don't love having always-on listening devices at home.
These are all things that it used to be able to do!!! But I can only conclude, from decades dealing with google, that Home is now part of their already released and no longer care phase, and it won't ever get better again.
So, how are you even finding it usable anymore? Did you ever experience a dip in services and then it's back?
Ohhhhhhhhh, I see what you mean.
Yes, the functionality has gone way down hill. I use ours for two things:
1.) Turning on/off lights
2.) Asking what the forecast for the day is
We will sometimes ask a question about an actor or something we read about in the news, and it's a coin flip whether it will even give us an answer. We almost hate doing that because then we might get a very unwanted "And by the way" response and have to start screaming "Hey Google, stop!" (like you said).
Ah yeah, ok I also see what their issues are. I only ever use it in the bathrooms as a timer and to play audio from my phone or to tell me the weather for the day.
In the kitchen, we use it as a timer, music player, and to tell us conversions when baking.
We don't use it for anything else. It also sometimes randomly starts talking when we didn't use the wake words, but if we lost all three, I wouldn't be sad, since I still have my phone and ipad, and can easily just get a bluetooth speaker for the three places I use the Google home. We only have them because we won them.
Same boat here...rage quite Google Home stuff after a particularily annoying battle of it interrupting mealtime.
They went from utterly amazing technology, better than Amazon's in every use case I tried, to giant nuisances that no longer did what they did well 2 years prior. I'm honestly flabbergasted that they managed to screw up the Home so bad.
That's the most frustrating thing right? That we know a tech can exist, that it has existed, and then they take it away >:E
Seriously, can't wait to tell my grandkids: Yea, we used to have excellent computer voice assistants in the home before your parent was born. Then somebody fucked it up and we've been chasing that dragon ever since.
I'm half-convinced it was a business decision to let it fall apart because there wasn't really anything to improve upon once they had multi-room audio groups and paging. It was a perfect product, and letting it remain perfect would kill the ability to sell new iterations.
This is a serious capitalism fail. Organizations can’t sit still and wait for a change that is truly an upgrade. Move fast and break things applies to their own awesome products.
Somehow their voice-to-text seems to still be worse than it was a decade ago.
I had the same thing happen, but it was due to an update with Google Assistant forgetting all my selections. You can configure your News sources in the assistant app, where you also need to configure your location or whatnot.
Not saying there's not a bunch of other stuff with issues... But most of it might configurable(??), just for whatever reason those settings are buried.
I have three that we use every day. They haven't had any issues at all.
Gmail started in 2004.
It's an interesting situation this person has found themselves in, since Google pretty clearly sold it as "unlimited storage", and that's what that person used it as, and now the rug is being pulled out from under them -- first as a 6 month grace period of read-only access, and then a week at the end before the data gets deleted.
On the other hand, from the hacker news thread on it, estimates on how much this would cost to host on alternative storage services range from $5000 a month on S3, $1457 on rsync, $1428 on Backblaze B2, down to $250 to $900 a month on AWS' Deep Glacier. I'm not sure how much I can feel sorry for them for how much of a deal they were getting in the first place. It's still very shitty that they were sold unlimited and the rug was pulled, and that they now probably don't have enough time to back up their data, but that was one hell of a free lunch they got all that time.
It would, it turns out, be way cheaper and easier for them to have bought 250+TB of storage devices themselves and held the data themselves -- but it turns out they did that originally, and the FBI raided them over some "leaked Fox News footage" they had, and now they no longer have that local storage.
hosting in read-only is way way cheaper than an actively syncinig read-write cloud storage system. For all the money enterprise costs over the years Google could definitely keep that as read-only for cheap.
But regardless of my feelings, a week notice is enterprise is a blink of the eye. It's absolutely unacceptable to give a business such a short notice to do any large move. That's where it really messed up, even before taking into account the math of it all:
250 terabytes in a week mean you need to be transferring about 1.5TB a DAY to get it all transferred in time. 67 GB an hour, 1.2 GB a minute, 20MB/s (or I guess as internet service advertises: 160Mbps) Again, assuming you have some handy 250 TB hard drive on hand and can get to work immediately. Depending on where the person lives, you may not even have physical access to such speeds, and even then it'll be very hard to suddenly ramp up such consistent traffic on a 200/400 Mbps connection. You transfer that much in such a short period and your ISP will likely hit you in the same way Google is now.
It's all just ludicious. If it was a month grace period, it would suck but be possible (almost. Assuming the ISP issues are resolved. Big if) A week is just unacceptable on multiple fronts.
All this has me wondering: what happened to 60-day and 90-day notice periods for business stuff? A week of heads-up is ridiculous, as you mentioned, but especially at this time of year! Half the people I talk to at work know someone who’s on leave for most or all of December, and for people who work part-time this might effectively be 48 hours notice.
If they at least had an option for Google to ship out a hard drive with your data (for some price) then it would be maybe okay…
The initial change was announced in 2020, I'm not sure about what communications came between then and the May 11th email in the article, but that email from May 11 says a 60 day grace period. After that, they said 7 days until deletion.
7 days is not a long time, no, its definitely not enough for downloading 237.22TB of data, but it's definitely not the first they would have heard about the changes.
I also looked up what he might have been paying out of curious, and from what I can tell it would be about $276 annually for the "Google Workspace Enterprise Standard" plan.
Perhaps google should have thought of that before offering an 'unlimited' storage plan.
It's obvious that anything sold as 'unlimited' or 'unmetred' is sold unfairly, because infrastructure costs money to operate and maintain. Obvious to me, that is, and, I expect, to you. But I think people can be forgiven for not knowing that when a very large and well-reputed technology company claims it is fair.
I don't understand why companies are allowed to advertise things as "unlimited" when unlimited anything is impossible
Because a reasonable person understands that and advertising is allowed to be hyperbolic when a reasonable person would realize it's not literally true.
But the reasonable person test would lead us to an interpretation that "unlimited storage" means "within the company's capacity", not "whenever the company says they're done".
Yes, but it's also reasonable to assume that companies will change their offerings in the future.
That, taken as a basic assumption, is basically a blanket defense against any charge of misleading advertising.
Yes, but they gave six months notice, which is also very reasonable. It's not like they suddenly reneged.
They suddenly reneged when they gave a 7 day notice prior to deletion, after only previously indicating that he'd be unable to upload. Read-only mode doesn't imply a ticking clock.
They can change their other offerings. Existing plans damn well be grandfathered in. That's been pretty standard, for as long as I can remember. Being able to just arbitrarily change the offerings of what someone is paying for, for the worse, is a relatively recent bullshit.
Cellphone companies were forced to honor their early 3g/4g Unlimited Data plans for existing customers, because that's what they were sold as. That's the reason all "Unlimited Plans" now also carry that fine print of "Up to 5GB of high-speed data, then rate-limited".
I paid for 2TB of Lifetime pCloud storage. My expectation, as a consumer, is that I get that 2TB for no extra cost until pCloud goes bust.
If they want to change the terms? They damn well better issue me a full refund and give me 6 months to migrate off.
Frankly, if it's advertised as Unlimited, I should be permitted to accept it as unlimited and recieve court damages when they decide it's not. Maybe companies will not be hyperbolic about infinite anymore.
And that's an easy way to lose the trust of a B2B relationship. Which is why you don't pull the same tricks on businesses as you would a regular cusomer .
Why should a reasonable person not construe "unlimited" to mean "without limit"? Advertising is an arms race anyways, so regulating the language and having them say "nearly unlimited" would have the same effect.
Um because there's only a limited amount of data storage in the world and Google doesn't own all of it?
If I sell a naked put, I have unlimited liability no matter how high the stock shoots up. I don't get to reneg the agreement (without consequence) because I don't have infinite money and "no reasonable person would think I do".
Isn't that what bankruptcy is? I don't think you can become an indentured servant anyhow.
Yes, but in bankruptcy your assets are seized to help recoup the losses to your creditors.
Why should companies be allowed to lie? Just because a “reasonable” person won’t believe what they say doesn’t make it acceptable. And why shouldn’t less intelligent or knowledgeable people be protected from such predatory behavior?
Because you can't base everything on the 1% otherwise society would come to a screeching halt. There's an actual limit to the degree you can foolproof anything or protect everyone from everything. It doesn't mean you don't try to do what you can, but you have to at least acknowledge that you can't actually stop it all.
Yes, you can. At least, for companies that are legal entities, not people, providing a good or a service under clear terms. We should nold companies to higher standards of unambiguous communication because they only exist insofar that the legal language fomenting their existence is clear.
In the case for unlimited, it should be interpreted "as much as is possible within the physical bounds of reality."
If Google advertises "Unlimited drive space", but means 100GB, and Microsoft advertises "Unlimited OneDrive Space", but means 500GB, they're both lying and trying to gain marketshare based on that lie, Google more unfairly than Microsoft.
This was the claim made. So if a reasonable person defense isn't possible, then you're stating it has to apply even for unreasonable people. There's really nothing more to say to this if you think that is valid.
As for the specific claims about Google, I don't necessarily disagree that the specific incident here could have numerous issues with their communication both pre and post sale.
However the remark I was replying to was clearly stated more general in nature, which is because the comment it was replying to was also general about the nature of advertising, not about this specific case. So you're introducing specific elements of the subject into a conversation that had broadened to general discussion and taking remarks that were made generally and applying them to one specific situation, that isn't an accurate characterization of those remarks.
This exchange only further demonstrates one of the problems in trying to address every single interpretation, which is that there's no language you can use that people can't pick apart. Just because you're a big tech company doesn't change the nature of language, and what's worse, the only way you can remedy this is by making 10,000 page terms of service that no one has time to read in an attempt to force the language to be unambiguous, which actually makes it less accessible to everyone.
Prohibiting outright lying in ads can hardly be characterized as placing an undue burden on anyone. I doubt that such a prohibition would cause society to come to a screeching halt.
Sometimes it's not even hyperbolic but something can be unlimited in the service but could be considered implied understanding that it's constrained to one person or some other constraint of realistic usage. I get that using the word "constraint" to describe unlimited sounds a bit like an oxymoron, but that's language for you.
For example, Gmail could offer unlimited emails within the expectation that you're an actual person who is just manually typing up and sending out emails, until someone comes along and decides to automate sending emails beyond the rate of what an individual person could realistically send emails at. So would Gmail be hyperbolic to advertise unlimited emails? Well nowadays that would probably not fly because there's lots of automation in things and even the average person has some tools at their disposal to automate some things, but perhaps if such an offering was made 15 years ago or something it could have been considered a reasonable thing for people to assume it implied regular human usage and not automated usage. To the average person who had no access to any type of automation, it is possible they could have truly offered unlimited emails to those people.
Now it's another thing to offer unlimited storage and maybe argue that the average person only has 1TB of data so unlimited would serve them well and its other people abusing it, because that's not accounting for that person pushing the boundaries of what they could save that is within their capabilities, it's just taking into account their common behavior. I think that type of advertising would be more hyperbolic and there's not really a scenario where they are offering unlimited to anyone, they're just expecting that most people won't have any reason to try to use it. In this scenario, the person using 1TB and the person using 1PB could be using the same methods of uploading the data, just the person doing 1PB could be spending far more of their time uploading or managing this data than the person who has only 1TB.
well, given that your email is bound to your drive storage now and that both my accounts have been pestering me on running out of space, yes. It would be hyperbolic. 5GB casually is nothing in the internet age for an active user, and I guess even my 100GB account is getting close (not because of email mind you, but it now impacts my ability to email).
It may be plenty in 2005, but this reminds me of the infamous "640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody."*. If you're gonna promise "unlimited", it should at least have an asterisk on it with some fine print for the power users who may be the most active pain points of your business. Nothing is infinite, nothing is forever.
*and to practice what I preach, I will note that Gates denies ever saying this quote and there is no strong proof linking it to him. But to quote someone else on the topic:
That's not really relevant to the example I provided because it was hypothetical. It was only meant to illustrate the dynamics of how you can word something to mean unlimited and actually mean it while still there being some underlying constraint.
I'd agree that asterisks with fine print need to be utilized more often, however one must consider that you can't account for every little edge case by adding 50 notes to every advertisement or headline like [1][2][3] etc. and inevitably some of it probably gets buried in some long terms of service document or something.
I also think that there's certainly cases to argue that using "unlimited" or oversubscribing shouldn't be allowed, but I don't think it's that simple to eliminate all of those entirely. I wouldn't doubt if my ISP is oversubscribing by offering multi gigabit per second plans to every single person, like if every single person decided to take them up on it and fully utilize it, they probably couldn't actually meet what they offered. Yet it's also extremely unlikely that would happen, and in the meantime it means I get better speeds than if they were constrained to only offering what was possible if every single person took them up on the offer.
I felt it was important to mention because back then I could believe 5GB was "unlimited". In the days where it was only email and your emails had 25MB attachment limits. There is certainly room to suggest that the worst case 200 attachments if you were attaching to every email the max size can be "unlimited", but they did away with that recently. I wouldn't call it a rug pull, but it does feel like the deal has been slightly changed.
of course not. That's what the ToS are for. But I do believe that those asterisks should take into account constratints when advertising "unlimited" or "free", if it is in fact limited or constrained to a certain time of day. However, I guess it's not a new phenomenon for advertisement to push the boundaries of lyinig, so I'm probably treading familiar ground here.
yeah, ToS are to deal with the edge cases. But the edge cases tend to be the most "rowdy" customers, almost by definition. They advertise to the 99% and can sweep the 1% under the rug as they grumble away and their friends say "what? it's fine for me, I got plenty of space/time/budget left".
I feel if you can't deal with that, then it's just not a good business. Customer Service doesn't tend to get calls from 99% of customers either, and if they did I hope the solution isn't to shut down CS.
For all intents and purposes, you can pretend I said "XYZ123mail" instead of Gmail, then we wouldn't be talking about their 5GB storage or anything similar. Of course you could expand the scope to consider what else unlimited means, like attachments or adding images into the email etc. but the point was simply to prove how not every mention of unlimited means they're being hyperbolic or lying, there's possibilities where unlimited with some reasonably implied constraints is actually an unlimited offering for the vast majority it applies to.
Now it is true that as technology changes and behaviors of people evolve that often times those claims can become outdated, but you can't expect people to predict the future in terms of what elements change and what ones don't. Some people didn't consider upload speed important for awhile until some of these additional services started cropping up or when certain technology became more available. Home surveillance systems were more of a niche, and they're a lot more popular now, and happens to be one thing that expands the need for more upload speed. Streaming on Twitch wasn't always a thing if you go back far enough but now it is, and needs upload speed. Yet there's a thousand other things that people probably said we wouldn't need and those might still be as true today as they may have been 10-20-30 years ago at any point someone may have said them. In some cases, those "unlimited" offerings that end up changing over time might give people the chance to explore new things that they wouldn't have otherwise and increases demand to the point it outstrips capacity, but that's not necessarily a bad thing that the "unlimited" became outdated.
Of course the challenge is that sometimes it's hard to tell when companies are doing things because of technical limitations or because of greed. It's widely believed that Comcast abuses their market position to implement their bogus 1TB per month bandwidth cap for completely non-technical reasons. Of course customers should be upset about that because it isn't based on any technical limitations and it's just artificial scarcity because they have no competition due to effective infrastructure monopolies in some areas.
sure, anyone can do it. But since the subject is Google, I felt it pertinent to show yet another example of "it used to be but now isnt because Google".
I don't. I just hope their ad terminology changes with the time. The sad part is that it usually doesn't, which is annoying and leads to that rug pull feeling. Sometimes it's out of necessity, sometimes simply out of penny pinching.
The latter point of penny pinching is the much more dangerous practice and exactly how so many of the largest tech industries rose to prominice, which is why these days it does feel more like "greed:. The so called "embrace, extend, extinguish". By the time the "extinguish" comes, they are already so ingrained that it becomes hard not to accept their terms.
And it's hard not to feel it for Google. their earnings call had them post a profit of $266m dollars. keeping a few thousand servers read-only for a few years as users migrate out of their false advertisement wouldn't kill the company. That's what makes it feel greedy.
I'd hope that regulations can catch that before the fact, but tech in particular does seem to move at a breakneck pace. They are usually off to the next frontier by the time regulations try them on the last decade.
Same as "all you can eat buffet". They advertise on the premise that 99% of people will not even come close to eating it all. I imagine the majority won't even get their entry's worth but are brought in by the "promise".
Ofc, the 1% in this case get kicked out at best because the house always wins. Tech isn't any different in that regard.
"All you can eat" is a real limit, though. There's a limit to how much you can eat within that period without dying.
These days I wouldn't be surprised if the prices of such buffets are close to or beyond such limits. It was certainly feasible to "beat the buffet" 20 years ago, though.
I had to make a decision last week on whether to use Google or Amazon’s managed kubernetes. Even though it’s Google’s software I don’t trust their hosting. So AWS was my choice.
The first email could have been clearer but what exactly did the person think would happen after the end of the "60 day grace period"? As if Google would continue to store their 200tb+ for ever.
That first email says:
Theres no mention of what would happen beyond that date.
That they'd have more than a week's notice before it was all gone? You can store stuff read-only for much chewer than a dynamic storage. Google probably had/has several enterprise services with even more data.
I'm sure he was already transferring some of it, but the whole FBI raid on his house in retaliation from Fox News probably put a wrench in his plans. 4th amendment lawsuits are probably a big distraction from what a reasonable person would have already done.
Really hope this problem is solved. Hope I get to access my childhood email again one day lmfao. I never understood how we all tolerated this sort of behavior.
Techdirt was originally running the same software ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_(software) ), which by default has a "Department" field for each story. Definitely brings back some memories.
Off site backups are only reliable if you own the site its backed up at, way too many people put way too much trust in cloud services.
Given that they were raided by FBI and had their hardware seized, a backup you own is no backup at all
fair point
My strategies for avoiding this problem are:
Which is great, until the feds raid your office and take your shit on a flimsy pretext, as happened with the subject of this blog post.
Yeah, this is an exceptional case where the 3 points of failure all failed in (relatively) short succession. I guess the "lesson" is to make sure your local server isn't also in the same location as your hard drive in case your 4th amendment rights are violated.
It's kinda weird how this piece is making Google out to be the bad guys, when it seems more like it's the FBI who are the biggest dickheads.
I guess it makes some sense, considering this is a blog about tech, not civil rights. Still, it's as though someone burned down this guy's house, and instead of being angry at the arsonist, he's getting huffy at the manager of the hotel he stays at afterward because she evicted him from the room for non-payment.
Yeah, in a vacuum it does feel weird. google is at fault but the real issue here is the FBI ruining the very advice most people give on storing backups.
Main thing is that that story was some 6 months ago and AFAIK, the journalist affected has long since gotten a lawsuit started about it. It's a slow process but there isn't much for news to report on except reminding the user of the context.
As the article points out, the journalist in question could not have reasonably done the first: the FBI has seized all of his local storage. While officially, he hasn't 'lost' that data, and they're officially obligated to give it back to him at some point in the future. even if he had any backups, it's unlikely he'll see any of them for the next few years.