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I'd also like to see the rest of the assumptions baked in. Is there some trust fund involved -- which requires that we now consider the risk associated with how the $2 is invested to get an adequate return?

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It's based on the assumption that storage costs per GB will continue to decrease for their definition of "perpetuity." If you assume a consistent fall in costs, the total cost becomes a convergent series [1] and there is an upper limit even with an infinite number of years.

Suffice it to say, physics is probably going to have a lot to say about that assumption in the coming decades.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_series

I too am a bit confused about that $2/GB for perpetuity. I'm assuming that's a loaded cost representing maintenance, backups, power. A TCO kind of number. Maybe that's a bad assumption?

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