[tomswartz07]

I see this as a double-edged sword.

1. It makes sense that Google wants to stop apps from abusing their storage platform. There are a lot of projects that abuse the data storage capacity. There was that one app that converted files to Base64 or something and was storing files that way as email text. Obviously not cool. However, Google needs to be explicitly clear on expectations and throw some people-power behind the reviews, since many are being denied by (seemingly) some automated process.

2. The second issue I see is that it will encourage less secure methods of using these apps. SMSBackup+ in particular is discussing the possibility of moving to "App Passwords" to bypass 2FA and provide the app access it needs to upload and store the data. Issue being, App Passwords are incredibly fragile, they provide near-unfettered access to IMAP and other account features with no auditing. Caveat emptor and all that.

I think SMSBackup+, specifically, has a bit of a gray line as SMS messages can technically be sent via email and vice versa, (among other similarities). It's a shame that Google is becoming so draconian about their data storage uses.

[baroffoos]

How can you abuse storage? You get n gb of storage on your account. Why does it matter what you store on it or what tools you use to utilize it?

[ddalex]

Some things such as google docs text documents do not count towards your quota - so people converted data to base64 and uploaded that as docs to get free storage - bit of a dick move if you ask me, as it forces google to take steps like this one and kill the goodness for the rest of us

[baroffoos]

Google offered unlimited storage of private documents and people used it. I see nothing wrong with that. If this became an issue then goggle should have set limits or made it count to your google account storage. There is no point offering "Unlimited storage" and then stop people from using it.

[sdenton4]

I went to a restaurant that offered free refills last week. I brought a 50 gallon barrel with me, and then took home a whole barrel of soda...

(Or, in other words, somehow all sense of fair play and decorum go out the window once we're anonymous on the internet. And this is why we can't have nice things.)

[TeMPOraL]

It's not like this.

Google doesn't like storing files as e-mails with base64-encoded binaries because it competes with Google Drive. That solution - the Gmail Drive - existed long before Google Drive, and even had a nice tool that mounted your gmail storage as a network drive on Windows! GMail storage isn't unlimited, so I always considered it fair - they give me a couple of GB of free storage, it's up to me how I use it.

As for the unlimited offers and restaurants, people don't do that too much in meatspace because they'd get thrown out by security for obvious abuse. But they do it a little, like e.g. couples buying one cup and using it together. There are also natural limits to how much soda you can consume or use, even if you got away with taking home a whole barrel (sodas lose gas fast)...

(And note that the "decorum" and "fair play" doesn't apply in meatspace either, when it comes to e.g. retail chains making mistakes in their promotions, like that one famous case where (AFAIR) Lidl in Poland offered refunds for products you didn't like if you brought back the box, whether or not the product was still inside. You can imagine what happened next.)

However, ultimately, it's the company that's playing tricks on people with "unlimited" marketing, and they deserve the problems they get when people take it at face value (offering something with no intent to fulfill that offer is plainly dishonest). Reminds me of a mobile vendor that offered USB modem with free unlimited LTE for $notmuch, back when LTE was a somewhat new thing (~2012). A friend bought the subscription to test it out, and discovered that the "unlimited" LTE was actually throttled past 20th or 30th GB. Guess which company I never considered buying Internet services from since?

It's not because of customers that we can't have nice things. It's because of companies using dishonest marketing tactics and then acting surprised when some people call them on their bluff. It isn't so hard to say "no hard limits <small>but we throttle you past XX $unit, and there are following restrictions on use...</small>", except treating customers with respect is anathema to modern business.

[chrisan]

Whats the marketing term for "practically unlimited for normal usage patterns"? Because I think that's what they are after here in marketing.

The majority of the population will use these "unlimited" plans/products in a way that they never realize the limit. However there is always the outlier person that sees "unlimited" and is basically using the product at the max 24/7

Its much easier to say to the avg joe you have unlimited X instead of. Choose from the following 27 plans depending on how much a,b,c,x,y,z you need or even a you only pay per x of what you use! The avg person isn't going to even know those factors.

I think "Unlimited(asterisk)" marketing is here to stay for those reasons and if you are the minority power user then its up to you to read the asterisk

[dboreham]

"Unlimited" is a marketing term with a very specific meaning. It means "limited".

[air7]

That's in interesting point. It's not so much that the sense of fair play is lost, but that it changes. Somehow, we lose track of the human factor when we don't see it and focus solely on "logic" or our own self interests.

In this example "unlimited", which actually means "unlimited within reason" works perfectly well (even though it isn't well-defined) in a human setting. We naturally and instinctively understand that people don't mean "take as many as you want" or "make yourself at home" literally.

But on the internet, if it's a data/storage plan, we might get angry at anything less than infinity, because logically > "There is no point offering Unlimited storage and then stop people from using it."

I see this also apply to our "moral ease-of-use" for adblockers/paywall bypassers/torrents etc.

[mft_]

The phrase "this is why we can't have nice things" applies.

Life shouldn’t be about trying to take advantage of people or things to the maximum possible amount.

[SkyBelow]

It is like a box of donuts at the office. They are free. You can take one. Come back for a second if any are left. But walk off with the whole box and you will be judged for it. Do so repeatedly and it will become a problem enough for disciplinary actions to be considered.

Edit: If I were to try to formalize the rules, I would say that the donuts are free for everybody in the office but not for anybody in the office.

If you are acting as a group with everybody in the office, which means behaving according to certain social rules involving fairness and sharing, then you count as an everybody and can have a donut. Once you cease to do so you no longer count as an everybody and cannot have a donut.

If you have special rights to the donuts, taking them won't get you judged. For example, the person who brings in the donuts can take the remainder home at the end of the day or may choose to give the rest to someone to take home, and there won't be any judgment. Further exceptions can exist on an office by office basis.

Tying this back to Google, I think there is one notable difference. Google is a private company, not a person, and is engaging in an extremely formal relationship by way of EULA/ToS/Privacy Policy/etc. Companies abusing loopholes in contracts are far more tolerated by people abusing loopholes in our shared social contract.

That is likely why my reaction at someone exploiting unlimited Google docs storage is far more 'meh' than someone violating social norms in the office.

[trickstra]

Tragedy of the commons

[kjaftaedi]

You would think that the space for text documents would be negligible to the point that it would make more sense to count documents against the quota.

[zantana]

Well G Suite deals in academia allow for unlimited storage. If you use the official tools they will throttle you, but if you use something like rclone https://rclone.org/ you can sometimes circumvent these limits.

When I was researching using a tool which leveraged a similar system and talked to a university which had backed up literally a petabyte of data to a single drive account.

Google's vague terms of service in terms of their "unlimited" storage is just a mess on both sides.

Like all cloud storage at the end of the day, if you're a paying customer or not, there are no guarantees you'll ever be able to retrieve anything once its off your infrastructure.

[newvoiceoldphne]

Google can't monetize it if they can't read it. Why do you think e2e email encryption is still not the default.

[nullwasamistake]

Google only wants you to use that storage for things it can index (to sell ads)

[lordpankake]

I doubt this has anything to do with my Unlimited Drive storage thing. Google are doing this to stop API consumers from storing user data on their own, presumably less safe than Google's, servers. I agree with that decision completely.

[privateSFacct]

Presumably less secure is not the issue. Buried in the fine print of many of these tools that save you money or do other things with your account is explicit permission to share / distribute / use your data in lots of ways. It's explicitly not secure.

These scam apps trade off being inside the protected platforms, so users expand their trust assuming (incorrectly) that a third party app will treat their data well.

"This is how scammers are now abusing Google Calendar to pillage your data"

"Gmail app developers have been reading your emails"

The headlines are ALREADY happening.

Why should google risk their brand so some grow fast and break things startup can create the next cambridge analytica scandal? They are one big CA type scandal away from being looked at as the next facebook (not a good look).

[nine_k]

Just read it again.

To me, it reads like this: Google is going to prevent users from storing users' data elsewhere. As if it's Google's data, not users'. Though with the free tier this as well may in fact be the case :-/

[BoorishBears]

If a 3rd party gets breached with Gmail-sourced data, the headline isn't going to be "No Name plugin breached".

It's going to be "Gmail data breached".

[nicholosophy]

There's that aspect.

I also imagine there is the other side where the third party has crap data security. End users figure that their data is safe with Google and may not consider that there is a third party with their various levels of security.

I can see Google copping a lot of heat should Company X have a data leak and that data was originally gathered from a users Google data store, whether it is justified or not.

[nullwasamistake]

Security is the go-to excuse for taking away control from users these days. For those that run Gmail on their own domain this makes 0 sense. They have control over the whole domain, restricting access to Gmail does nothing for security

[londons_explore]

If you're a paid Google apps customer, these restrictions don't apply.