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Google's Storage Problem

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IainB:
There are a lot of discussion threads referring to the pros/cons/comparisons of different Cloud storage services of one form or another, and I wasn't sure which one to post this to, so here it is on its own. I thought it was potentially quite useful in making the points that it does:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
Google's Storage Problem
A lot of people wonder what happens when you stop paying for additional Google storage. Google doesn't delete your files, but you're forced to delete some of them because you can't upload new files until you use less than 15GB of storage (your quota may be different).

A downside of Google's shared storage system is that it affects both Gmail and Google+ Photos, not just Google Drive. Gmail used to offer 10GB of free storage, Picasa Web/Google+ Photos only 1GB and Google Drive - 5GB. Small photos (< 2048x2048) and short videos (less than 15 minutes) uploaded using Google+ Photos, as well as the documents, spreadsheets and presentations created using Google's Drive apps don't count towards your storage limit.

"If you exceed your quota limit, you'll receive warnings in each product and you'll need to correct the issue as soon as you can. Otherwise, you'll be unable to upload additional items to your Drive or photos to Google+, and, after a period of time, incoming messages to your Gmail account will be returned to the sender and you won't be able to send new messages," explains Google.

Now that Yahoo Mail offers 1TB of free storage and Outlook.com "includes email storage that expands to provide you with as much storage space as you need", Gmail's 15GB limit doesn't look that impressive. Maybe Google wants to encourage people to use Google Drive for uploading files, instead of using Gmail attachments.

Yahoo's Flickr service offers 1TB of free photo storage. "No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat." Suddenly, Google's photo offering is less impressive: you get unlimited photo storage, but only if you resize the photos.

It looks like Google no longer has the edge when it comes to free storage. Gmail offered 1GB of free storage when its main competitors only included a few megabytes of storage. Now roles are reversed.

Posted by Alex Chitu at 10/10/2013 01:41:00 PM

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Jibz:
Now that Yahoo Mail offers 1TB of free storage and Outlook.com "includes email storage that expands to provide you with as much storage space as you need", Gmail's 15GB limit doesn't look that impressive. Maybe Google wants to encourage people to use Google Drive for uploading files, instead of using Gmail attachments.
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As long as people are just storing regular email, promising 1 TB or unlimited space is a bit hollow, since nobody has that much normal email.

If people start using 3rd party tools that enable them to use ymail and outlook.com as cloud storage (like they did with gmail), I think it's likely they will find "as much storage space as you need" does probably not mean what it says, and 1 TB likely has some fair use limits as well.

For the file storage part (Drive), I agree that 15 GB is no longer anywhere near impressive. It's still better than the 2 GB offered by DropBox though.

saralynn:
I'm looking forward to the prospect of decentralization, people using a "buddy system" (or whatever) to send backup copies of their files to friends' drives... rather than DEPENDING on the free (or freemium or commercial) offerings of commercial entities.

Storage capacity is cheaper-than-ever, yet people have allowed themselves to be steered into using phone or tablet form factor computing devices having minimal storage, with no choice (no SATA or USB port on the device) but to "upload it and store it in the (their) cloud". Post raspberryPi, I believe we're only a device generation (or 2) away from personal ARM -based wearable computers. In that scenario, I do expect the "personal cloud" paradigm to shift toward wearable and /or home-based "personal server(s)".

In the meantime, OwnCloud seems to be gaining traction. But (I say) if ya gotta authenticate through THEIR server... what's the sense in that?

SeraphimLabs:
Personal Clouds are already coming. Right now you can get a WD MyCloud device, which is a 2tb ($140) or 3tb ($170) network storage device that comes with software to automate setting up effectively a personal cloud with most common devices based on the MyCloud's 2-3TB hard drive. Doing this gets you effectively cloud-like data availability, while retaining the privacy and security of knowing the physical location of where your data is being stored.

I bought one at work for use as an onsite backup device since I wanted a network-attached drive instead of a USB one. Found a pleasant surprise in that I could SSH into it, revealing that it actually runs Debian 7 on a dual-core ARM CPU. Although I've configured that one as a stripped down bare file device suitable for rsync-backed data replication, I might buy a second unit for my own use and actually put the cloud capabilities to the test.

Google on the other hand is quickly falling victim to corporate greed. Their once unrivaled offerings are now merely "whatever works" grade. And with growing loss of trust in google because of their recent privacy policy changes, that's not going to be anywhere near enough for them to remain a big contender in that market.

Vurbal:
In the meantime, OwnCloud seems to be gaining traction. But (I say) if ya gotta authenticate through THEIR server... what's the sense in that?
-saralynn (October 24, 2013, 06:04 PM)
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I'm not sure I follow. If I setup an OwnCloud server at home I have to authenticate against my server to use it. You seem to be saying you have to authenticate against some third party server which isn't true. They may have a product that works that way but it's definitely not a requirement if you're running your own server.

The one downside to OwnCloud, assuming it hasn't improved since I looked into it a few months ago, is the encryption it uses is apparently a joke. It's not really a downside for me. My philosophy is not to rely on a single vendor or product to provide a complete solution. I would never rely on a single provider for both cloud storage and the encryption to protect my files. I avoid single points of failure whenever possible.

However for the average person - particularly when the cloud storage isn't provided by some big company - that's exactly what they want and need.

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