[crazygringo]

Well of course it is for Google to decide. They're the ones running the service. ;)

But again, if you ever want to retrieve all 5M files, I hope you're willing to wait a few weeks-to-months, because that's what it's going to take...

Which is why it's a terrible idea not to tarball them first to something more manageable in terms of latency per file operation.

[bingobongodude]

It was not for them to decide up until now. And yes of course users were willing to wait $duration for it until now. If you are suggesting a work around that is okay. It is not okay for google to tell their users to tarball "now" "because".