If it's excessive, then Google shouldn't have offered an unlimited data plan. They could have called it a 100 TB plan, but they chose to call it unlimited to make it sound better and then canceled it once people took them up on the offer. Regardless of whether that kind of action is legal, it's a shady business practice.
For that matter, there's nothing wrong with Google discontinuing the plan going forward, but they had plenty of options for making the transition more fair and building consumer trust without hurting their bottom line too much. For example, they could have converted his account to a 250TB account and tripled its price, at which point he wouldn't be in immediate danger of losing his files but would be pressured into gradually moving to a more cost effective solution.
I have a tough time believe that they didn't give any warning and then kicked them off the service.
It was unlimited. If they didn't want it to be unlimited, it should have had a limit on it.
Right, which is why they discontinued it.
They offered unlimited, not unlimited forever.
It’s also reasonable that companies products change. And maybe it doesn’t last forever, fair enough. But if your product is backup, and you pull the rug with a 7 day grace period, of course people are going to be upset and warn others not to trust you.
The victim is "taking advantage" of an advertised feature of the service they paid for, and has done nothing wrong. The fault lies entirely with Google for advertising unlimited storage, knowing full well that no such thing exists. Same with every other cloud storage service that once advertised unlimited storage. Just because someone who understands how computer storage works could probably figure out that it wasn't really unlimited doesn't make it not false advertising.
Why do you think this?
Seriously I'm all on board with giving Google the much grief that they deserve - but I also would expect someone claiming victim here to have more of a claim than abusing a "unlimited" account and getting mad about it. Yes 100% Google should be holding onto their data or offering them the ability to pay for the larger data tier - that part is BS.
Get mad at the FBI for raiding you, get mad that you didn't think of another cloud service to store with or pay for an appropriate service (0.07$/TB [my rough calc] is dirt cheap to the point of suspect). I also have to assume that the individual, former anonymous hacker has some wherewithal to be suspect of 'unlimited' packages from large corporations.
There's gotta be more to this story -- it smells off.
So, not excessive. 237 TB does not exceed unlimited. What am I missing here?
>they knew they had found a loop hole in google policy.
What, exactly, is this loop hole?
> Because they are using 237 Tb in an unlimited service from Google
Google's a trillion dollar company. A popular saying amongst Googlers is "I don't know how to count that low". They're used to big numbers.
I work at a much smaller company. We are not a trillion dollar company. Even we, when offering an unlimited service, ask ourselves: "What happens if someone takes us up on this offer?"
It's not a loophole, it's what he paid for.
It's fine to stop offering an unlimited service. We did! My only beef with Google's conduct here is the 7 days of notice prior to deletion.
I've followed Mike Masnick's reporting in other cases. He seems like an even-handed, fair journalist. I trust that he's not hiding the ball, nor letting the other journalist mislead him about the situation.
I also have past professional experience that leads me to believe Google does what's easiest for Google, not what's best for their customers.
In one case, Google suspended a Google Certified Publishing Partner's GAM account for several hours with no notice. The partner had several years of history with Google, did $100M/year of revenue with them, and had an assigned Google rep who did weekly calls with them.
Google reactivated the account, but only after significant disruption to the partner.
I agree that it's good to be a critical consumer of news, but eh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably Google being blissfully ignorant of the impact they have on their users.