Google clamps down on free storage - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/gmail-hooked-us-on-free-storage-now-google-is-making-us-pay <comment><USER2> From the article:

> "I am unreasonably sad about using almost all of my free google storage. > Felt infinite. Please don't make me pay! I need U gmail googledocs!," one > person tweeted in September.

Will journalists PLEASE stop taking tweets from any rando out there and publishing them as "news". Yes, with hundreds of million of users you can basically find any quote you want to back up your pet theory.

I feel like I should just open a bunch of twitter accounts and post things like "Journalist X is a complete idiot" and then write an article about how the whole world thinks Journalist X is incompetent, with low and behold all these tweets to back it up!

<comment><USER3> Bingo! That's why Twitter is so distopian: they can craft any narrative by choosing which tweets to show in your timeline. The ultimate out-of-context quoting machine. 140 character limits was set in place for a reason.

<comment><USER4> > Bingo! That's why Twitter is so distopian

not sure if gp's point has anything to do with twitter itself or character limits.

<comment><USER3> gp is complaining about third parties quoting tweets out of context. When Twitter's raison d'être is out of context quoting. He saw trees, I'm glad to point at the whole forest.

<comment> V-eHGsd_ gp wasn't talking about tweets being taken out of context. they were talking about reporters using an entire tweet from a random person to support a random theory.

<comment><USER3> Tweets _are_ mass produced quotable out of context discourse. To be harvested to support arbitrary theories.

<comment> V-eHGsd_ it seems like your beef is with twitter generally, but gp (at least by my reading) was more complaining about the journalists that rely on it in this particular way, not the underlying platform.

I agree that twitter is a cesspool and does not encourage thoughtful communication, but it feels a little forced to me in this conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm an idiot. Like, hardcore.

This morning I made breakfast and left for work without eating it.

Even I came to the realization that if you don't pay for something you are a disposable, interchangeable asset to be exploited.

$4.25 per month gets me 25GB at Fastmail.

$1.08 per month gets me a domain name at Namecheap.

$5.33 per month gets me an email address with no ads and no tracking, support when things go wrong, and an email address that is my actual name at a .com address that sounds respectable.

If fastmail goes bad? All of my emails are on my computer. I just switch providers and I can keep the same address.

If namecheap goes bad? I move my domain name to another service.

There are step-by-step easy-to-follow tutorials on how to do what I did that are so simple to implement that even someone who left their bowl of oatmeal on the kitchen counter this morning and is really hungry at work could follow them.

If something isn't worth spending $5.33 per month on, is it really that important?

I don't pay for HN. If they started screwing with their users, or started charging for the service I would move on and certainly wouldn't write articles claiming that YC hooked me then hung me out to dry for cash.

<comment><USER6> Personally I pay for Gsuite because I worry smaller providers aren't well resourced enough to protect me from attackers.

I trust Google that if I have 2fa enabled and alerts for suspicious activity going out, they'll protect the infrastructure.

<comment><USER7> As a non-American, I don't trust the American Government not to compel Google to provide them access to my data.

<comment><USER8> As an American, I also don't trust the American Government to not compel Google to provide them access to my data. Yes, I know I am supposedly protected by due process- but Barr is making it explicitly clear that the 4th amendment does not apply to our digital lives.

<comment><USER9> Barr? The last 3 administrations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article seems awfully doom and gloom. I find that:

\- Google provides really good tools for archiving your data. If you want to reduce your storage footprint, you can use Google Takeout to grab it, archive it somewhere else, and then clean up items you no longer want. I recently did this with my photos, I knew I had some huge videos that had been uploaded that I didn't need (I had edited them into a Youtube video), so I was able to find and delete them and open up quite a bit of space. I toyed with the idea of deleting photos 5 years old, once I archived them, but I didn't need to because of the above.

\- Google provides a lot of value to me for the $3/month I've been spending. Photo enrichment and searching is something I use all the time. Storage of my documents and files is very useful and google has been super reliable.

<comment><USER11> I found it good value until they removed local syncing of Google Photos from their Gdrive client. That was where most of my data was. Making it only accessible via a web form download was a huge product downgrade that I don't think a more customer-responsive company would have risked. So I cancelled my subs & won't be going back (I'm sure they're quaking in their billionaire boots).

<comment><USER12> This! Just look at the threads here:

[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/112096115](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/112096115)

[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/113672044](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/113672044)

Google doesn't want you to be able to sync/backup your own photos anymore.

<comment><USER11> It's particularly infuriating because it was such a poorly-motivated change. Customers supposedly found the interaction with Google Drive confusing, so rather than improve ergonomics, they cretinously remove a lynchpin feature altogether. I still haven't found a really good alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the irony of this: I open the article and start reading. I am told that Google lured us in w/ free storage, but now I'm going have to pay since I've used so much storage. Then, a popup is overlaid on the article and the text is hidden. The popup says this article isn't actually free. I've read too many free articles on Bloomberg and now I'm going to have to pay for a subscription to keep reading.

I don't know what to take away from this other than the reminder that every public company has a duty to shareholders to take people's money! That's the function of a company: profit. What do we really expect here?

<comment><USER14> I agree that it's ironic/hypocritical. I disagree strongly that we should simply expect it. Consumer attitude is a real component of capitalism, so it's self-fulfilling to encourage silence under the theory that we can't affect anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would be more than happy to pay for gmail, google docs, and an entire suite of google products with the absolute guarantee legally that they could not and would not either collect, or sell my information as part of that payment.

I highly doubt that would ever happen though, considering data is the new oil.

Oh well, one can dream.

<comment><USER16> It's already possible by moving from a consumer Google account to a G Suite account.

The main difference between consumer Google accounts and G Suites accounts is that G Suite accounts come with an extremely comprehensive (complex, complicated) administration panel which is absolutely overkill for use cases other than managing G Suite users within a company / organization.

But, you can sign up for G Suite as an individual, and most of the default settings will just work out of the box without much customization needed.

You will have issues if you want to use things like Google Home or Google Nest (or any other consumer-only services... Nest thermostats, for example, won't connect to G Suite accounts and only connect to regular Google consumer accounts).

Here's Google's guarantee re: legally not collecting / selling your G Suite data...

> There is no advertising in the G Suite Core Services, and we have no plans > to change this in the future. Google does not collect, scan or use data in G > Suite Core Services for advertising purposes. [1]

[1] [https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security- white...](https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security- whitepaper/page-6.html)

<comment><USER17> >> There is no advertising in the G Suite Core Services, and we have no plans to change this in the future. Google does not collect, scan or use data in G Suite Core Services for advertising purposes. [1]

To me that reads a lot like 'Google does indeed collect, scan, use, read, algorithmically process, mine, analyze, characterize, handle, refine, derive from, and peruse data in G Suite Core Services, but with the primary purpose of doing other stuff with it than direct advertising.'

Sorry, if that's actually not fair this time, but with all the doublespeak about these things for the last decade and a half or so, hedging like that does not inspire confidence.

<comment><USER18> Your use of "primary" paints in a worse light than it really is. From the quote it sounds like they don't use it period for advertising

<comment><USER17> I'm inclined to think I just added some honesty. When they've used it in their 'research and development to better understand your preferences and offer you better services' or whatnot, do you seriously believe that isn't to interact with ad targeting and all the other ways they use the models?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm actually really interested to see Google start charging for things instead of the usual cycle of spinning things up and shutting them down when the business model isn't there. I'd much rather pay 100$ a year for their services if it would guarantee their availability, and reduce the pressure to commoditize my data.

<comment><USER20> Am I going to pay $100/year for the same services and still get ignored when I get locked out of my account? Enterprise users already pay for Google services. It seems like recourse for them is no different than a free tier user (aside from blowing up on Twitter/Reddit/HN). Why would anyone want to pay for that?

<comment><USER21> It seems like the most reliable support system with Google is to have a SWE friend who works there who will document and enter tickets for you, which is completely absurd for a company of their size.

<comment><USER22> Knowing people at Google is absolutely the only way to get help with crucial issues.

Silly doesn't begin to describe it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are many ways to look at this...

1\. It is great that Google is working to come up income sources other than ads. This will help diversify their business and motives over time.

2\. This may cause some to think that the money is the only method of payment for the service that's happening. That payment via our data isn't happening because money is involved. I hope this does not happen.

3\. It opens the door for competitors who want to charge for a service. If Google can charge this gives some emotional motivation for others to do it instead of harvesting and selling data. It's a tiny thing and a bit part but still a thing.

4\. This is telling that Google isn't making enough money on this data to justify storing more of it. What does this say about enough for them? How much data do people want to store and what would it mean?

I'll stop at 4 things. I hope people wonder down these different paths that are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER24> Given that search data is not very valuable after 3 months I suppose the other data is less valuable after the same time. This may prompt some users to help google out by deleting their old less valuable data when they get near their limits, or if not they may help Google out with some money for storing old data that otherwise is not valuable for Google.

</comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn Short version: Google is offering paid plans for people who exceed the ample free 15GB of storage. There is so much to criticize Google for, but asking for money in exchange for a service is not one of them.

<comment><USER21> Yeah weren't people complaining about how they've been suffocating a lot of industries (like mapping, email) by offering so much for free subsidized by search ads.

<comment> mkr-hn There seem to be three broad generations--by adoption, weakly correlated with age--of internet-savvy people.

1: People who were very active in the BBS/Usenet days and saw the emergence of the public Internet and web.

2: People (like me) who mainly got on when the .com bubble was warming up. People in 1 and 2 saw or even had these complaints, and had plenty of skepticism about ad driven models when they emerged with the growing realization at Google and other surviving web companies that ads and data mining could save them after the crash.

3: People who only know the internet _after_ that. Who never knew a time when the internet was such a big, new thing that people still capitalized the word.

I think most of the people who complain about companies charging for stuff are in 3 and never knew what we lost when ad-funded silos pushed everything else out. It doesn't help that a lot of them are, along with 2 and even 1, struggling to make enough money to survive with so many jobs turned into SaaS or taken over by big outsourcing firms that don't need as many people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The journalist is not clear on where the line is here. From what I can tell, I still have my 15Gb of free storage linked to my Gmail account. It looks like this is linked to storage associated with legacy Chromebook accounts which originally came with 200Gb of free storage and now they have to pay for that data.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm happy to pay to Google, but I would be happy if in return it would stop mining my emails. Still, I know that it's too much to ask for.

<comment><USER27> Google does not mine your emails.

[https://www.blog.google/technology/safety- security/ensuring-...](https://www.blog.google/technology/safety- security/ensuring-your-security-and-privacy-within-gmail/)

Disclosure: I work for google on G Suite, but not on Gmail.

<comment><USER23> > We do not process email content to serve ads

This says nothing about email metadata being used in relation to ads or for uses of content unrelated to ads (e.g., generation of search results).

If I hadn't seen the leaked selfish ledger video [1] I would not look for these nuances in the language.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x- selfish...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish- ledger-video-data-privacy)

<comment><USER28> There's a linguistic ambiguity in the part of the op here. What is "mining"?

Is spam filtering mining? Is indexing for search (in Gmail) mining? Is sticking flights on your calendar (and nothing else) mining?

Mining sounds nefarious. Are analysis of emails for the consumer still mining? If they are, and any scanning of emails is bad, why use Gmail? To me at least, it's value is the stuff it does for me.

<comment><USER29> Gmail knows about more than flights. They know everything you've bought and received an email receipt for: [https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/878/#tl/search/Category%3...](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/878/#tl/search/Category%3Apurchases)

There's nothing in their privacy policy that explicitly states they don't use that info for ad targeting that I can see.

<comment><USER28> What part of "We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other G Suite services. Google does not collect or use data in G Suite services for advertising purposes." is ambiguous?[0]

But that's Gsuite, what about consumer Gmail?

"G Suite's Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalization, and Google has decided to follow suit later this year in our free consumer Gmail service. Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change"[1]

[0]: [https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650](https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650), under "Does Google use my organization's data in G Suite services or Cloud Platform for advertising purposes?"

[1]: [https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains- tractio...](https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in- the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely- align/#targetText=Consumer%20Gmail%20content%20will%20not,time%2C%20including%20disabling%20ads%20personalization).

<comment><USER29> Where is that? I get redirected to the general Google privacy page from within free Gmail.

I could read that as for only paid Gsuite Gmail, not free Gmail.

As an aside the "what part of..." leader in your reply comes across as rude. The resources you are citing aren't an easy find from within free Gmail. And they aren't in the privacy policy, so what I said remains true.

<comment><USER28> See my edit.

<comment><USER29> Neither is policy. One is a help doc, the other a blog post. They should probably codify it into their privacy policy.

<comment><USER28> Edit: [https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and- data/](https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/) See "Gmail" at the bottom:

"Google does not use keywords or messages in your inbox to show you ads. Nobody reads your email in order to show you ads."

Google's privacy policies are written to be understandable by lay-people. Describing the specific breakdowns of what things they aren't doing can be intimidating or scary. So they don't. But the information you care about is still there, unless you're assuming some weird level of linguistic runaround.

<comment><USER29> The privacy policy contradicts both. I assume policy would supercede a blog post if it came down to it.

<comment><USER28> See my edit, the privacy policy doesn't contradict either. (and if memory serves, the actual Gsuide corp privacy policy is a legalese pdf somewhere, that does make these things explicit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Migrating from Google Drive/One is to something like Nextcloud or a personal NAS is very easy. Just install the desktop application, mount your NAS or other cloud provides storage, and use your favorite synchronization tool to sync the data.

I've done this before with Nextcloud and a QNAP NAS and it couldn't be easier. I highly recommend taking the governance of your data seriously. If you don't you may end up losing everything without knowing it.

<comment><USER31> A personal NAS doesn't have the seamless backup of cloud storage. IMO your hardware is much more likely to fail than you are likely to get locked out of your Google account, even if the latter happens to some people. And even if you have backups, now you need to buy new hardware, reinstall, restore, while life is still going on, and during which your data is unavailable. I'd love to not depend on a huge cloud provider but I haven't found a DIY solution that matches the convenience and seamlessness. There are a few rare could sync products that claim client side encryption (SpiderOak, ResilioSync & Tresorit) but they're not fully integrated with Chromebooks, Android and/or iOS. (Right now I'm using a jury-rigged combination of SpiderOak for backup and Resilio Sync for sync, but it's kind of a hack. This is not a compensated endorsement, LOL.)

<comment><USER32> OTOH if you _get_ locked out of your BigG account and you don't have a backup elsewhere, you are screwed for good. So, I'd treat HW failures and account closures on the same level. You just have to think about the possibilities in your specific case: which HW are you willing to invest on VS how you are going to behave with your Google account.

<comment><USER33> When my wife was having issues with OneDrive I built a small tool which used the API to back up all the files to an external drive, avoiding the OneDrive sync system entirely. Worked quite well. I imagine similar things might be useful for people wanting to back up other cloud accounts.

You can do a Google Takeout but that's huge and therefore painful to do frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is iCloud really that lucrative? It's $9.99/month for 2TB - that's roughly 1/4 the price you'd pay for that much storage on "normal" S3, for example, or about what you'd pay for S3 glacier storage, not including transfer costs.

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is about the same price as iCloud, but also charges for downloads.

Since Backblaze is profitable (as far as I know?), presumably Apple _are_ making money off iCloud storage, but I'm still not sure if I'd use the word "lucrative" here.

<comment><USER35> >Is iCloud really that lucrative? It's $9.99/month for 2TB - that's roughly 1/4 the price you'd pay for that much storage on "normal" S3

...assuming you use exactly that much. If you use something like 250GB, it's twice the price as s3. If you check the offerings[1], there's a gap in the 200GB-2TB range. I suspect that's to force "average users" (in the 200GB-1TB range) into paying more than they need, while giving the appearance of being competitive (if you use all 2TB, which most won't).

[1]

        50GB: $0.99
        200GB: $2.99
        2TB: $9.99

<comment><USER36> The funny thing about consumer cloud storage is it's only useful if you aren't using all of it. Stuff just automatically showing up there is the point. If it's full, that doesn't happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would feel more sanguine if they let me sort emails by size making it easier to trim the bloat.

<comment><USER38> I think you can use a IMAP client like Thunderbird to clean it up.

(I say "think" because while I use a gmail account in my email client, I only use it to receive notifications from Google, so no wild folder/tags setup, and I never check the webmail to see if it matches the emails I see in Thunderbird)

<comment><USER39> Yes you can. You can go to the "All Mail" folder, add the "Size" column to the list view (right click the columns) and then proceed to sort every email by size.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/message-list- columns](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/message-list-columns)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've found their prices very reasonable and worth the cost for roughly 50GB in business and family related photos, with a healthy margin left for growth in storage needs.

</comment><comment><USER41> One of the complaints, in the article, is not like the others. The people that have been buying Pixel phones, expecting to have unlimited storage, to find out with the latest device Google forces your content to be compressed, do seem to have been tricked. If there's an expectation there, they have the duty to disclose it.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's difficult to figure out how storage is used in gmail. I downloaded my data and did a little analysis, summarized here: [https://i.imgur.com/x6yQBQu.png](https://i.imgur.com/x6yQBQu.png).

As of that time, my mailbox was using 17GB (14GB of which are in one long- running thread), and 900MB of that was email reply quotes. Google refuses to provide an option to disable email quotes, which are completely useless in an email thread of all gmail accounts.

I want my 900MB of free storage back, dammit!

Also, there's no way (AFAIK) to delete images attached to emails, while keeping the messages.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think the article forgets that Google is a business and they have an intrinsic motivation to make money. IMHO Google provides a ton of software at no charge to customers (I know, ads). Moving to a consumption-based pricing model w/ a generous free tier means that only the users who use Google's services the most end up paying for it.

Also, $20/yr for 100GB seems like a steal. I use G Suite even for my personal email but even on my longest-standing account with almost a decade of history I am only using 20GBs with the majority of that being photos.

</comment><comment><USER44> The problem here is not that Google started charging people for their services

The problem here is not the question if Gmail is good or not.

The problem is that they subsidized their Gmail and other services in order to get rid of small competitors and once they have a large market share, they will make most of their services paid. It will take time, it will be slow but it's going to happen.

And they use their large market share to keep all of the small independent mail providers and self-hosted email servers in check by marking their emails as spam.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, this is basic capitalism but pretty scummy nonetheless. Having an email address for a decade makes it incredibly difficult to change. The one "bright" spot is actually that Gmail isn't very good; other than the massive pain updating the world about your move there isn't much to lose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> When GMail started, they claimed that I'd never need to delete emails and I could always just archive them. I knew that claim was too good to be true, but I figured it'd be a long time before I really needed to worry about it.

Drive now exists and takes up more of that space, but I'm still comfortably away from my limits.

I'm not upset about eventually having to pay for storage, but I was and am upset about their claim that it would never be necessary.

<comment><USER47> This has become the pattern. Buying into something on the basis of a value proposition only to have it consistently changed from under you without any recourse. It's a bait-and-switch and that's why it's upsetting.

It's perfectly reasonable to charge for these services and what they are suggesting to charge -- if I were still a Google customer. But that's not how it was sold to everyone. How many competitors did they drive out by taking this approach and undercutting this way for so long?

<comment><USER48> That's unfair with respect to email.

I've had large corporate email environments in my portfolio for about half of my career. As recently as 2017, ~2-3% of a 200k org of those users would exceed the free GMail tier in terms of storage. I don't have the stats in front of me, but I'd put money on 80% of the userbase being less than 10GB.

Big email users are always using email as a filing system. Calling GMail bait- and-switch based on marketing claims made in a 2005 context is a pretty extreme stance. My team at a big enteprise org provided folks with _50-100MB_ (similar to pre-GMail online offerings) in 2005.

Then Google offered a seemingly limitless service that is to this day practically unlimited for all but the most active user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've been pretty happy with the following setup:

I have a domain at namecheap, which forwards my address (say firstname.lastname@example.com) to my gmail account. I use fetchmail from my home computer to bring the gmail content to my local mail server (dovecot), which serves it out to me via imaps.

That means there is usually very little sitting in gmail, and it can accumulate there for a while when I have to do maintenance on my home OpenBSD server (which is quite rare and doesn't last very long generally).

That means I can keep my email address "forever" (it'll always stay firstname.lastname@example.com) but I can switch out of gmail anytime I want, as long as the provider I switch to allows POP.

It also means I can take advantage of the spam filtering provided by gmail. I also take advantage of the "advanced parsing" they perform on my mail, but my default assumption is that anybody in the chain will be doing it anyways, so I have no illusions that switching out of gmail will help prevent any data mining.

</comment><comment><USER50> The problem with Gmail is that it lacks basic cleanup tools such as sorting by size and you are forced to waste your time with tricks like larger:20mb.

<comment><USER51> The bigger problem with GMail is that the mobile app has no controls to manage large amount of emails - not even a basic 'select all'. Which is hilarious, because Inbox was so good because it was easy to manage most of your email on your phone.

Now my Gmail is overflowing because it's too difficult to archive thing I want, or delete what I don't in bulk. I actually have to log into the web interface to do any kind of clean up, which is something I never had to do with Inbox.

<comment><USER52> It is possible to select more emails than are displayed; however operations such as deletion on large selections always fail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It's like $20 a yr for 100GB! It's an incredible deal.

</comment><comment><USER54> I paid. It's OK - it's an amazing service that changed my life. Even after paying, I still can't believe how cheap it is.

</comment><comment><USER55> They're not making us do anything. I'm getting so tired of low effort clickbait garbage like this.

</comment><comment><USER56> I was noticing just the other day that my Gmail storage is creeping upward towards its limit. I'm sure it could stand some cleaning out although I'm not sure how much that will affect the storage used.

It's also harder if you've been in the Apple ecosystem for a while with getting off with the free tier of storage.

I suspect a lot of us are going to end up paying various subscription fees for storage on a number of services we use.

<comment><USER57> I was surprised at how difficult it was to make "Delete" a top-level, default UI option even in the latest iOS version of Mail.

It seemed interesting and novel when Gmail first launched and they encouraged archiving everything, but all these years later, mail clients are still engineered around this notion, even when they're not Gmail-only mail clients.

I like to delete emails, and for me, on iOS, that means I tend to use either Outlook or Spark (between iPhone and iPad), or.. ironically, Gmail for iOS, which allows for a one-swipe-action committed delete.

<comment><USER56> I've gotten pretty lazy about deleting emails. But, the space aside, GBs of random stuff do make it harder to search for older emails and docs, especially if you're not sure exactly what you're looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> the news site that the article was written on only gives access to 5 free articles per month, its the same thing google has done.

</comment><comment><USER59> It will be healthy for both Google and the internet at large for Google to have a revenue stream diversified from advertising.

If consumers feel that it is normal to pay small amounts of money for useful web-based services, Google and other sites will have better and more transparent opportunities to monetize.

<comment><USER60> So long as they don't continue to sell my data while also taking my money, peace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Every time I get near maxing out my drive space, I just take some time to delete everything. If anything is really important I don't keep it in gmail or google docs. That way I can just do a wipe of all my emails and files at any time without worry.

</comment><comment><USER62> The article seems to be gated to subscribers only. The filter is applied after the article loads, so it may still be readable without executing javascript

E: that seems to only apply when using private mode, for whatever reason.

<comment><USER63> You can also use outline : [https://outline.com/](https://outline.com/)

<comment><USER64> Outline has been failing on almost any site I care to read recently. It's become far rarer to find an article that Outline works with, in my experience.

<comment><USER65> Worked fine for me? [https://outline.com/j453CJ](https://outline.com/j453CJ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> As a legacy gmail for organizations account holder, I would be very happy to start paying google to host my stuff, if they would flip me over to the newer gmail stuff that has all the new age APIs, integration, and google assistant stuff available.

I tried to just make a new one and migrate, but there is not a reasonable way I have found to migrate 10 gigabyte email accounts. With their rate limiting, I end up with napkin math suggesting about 30 days to migrate, using someone else's github scripts that do lots of error checking and restarting.

<comment><USER67> > _As a legacy gmail for organizations account holder, I would be very happy > to start paying google to host my stuff, if they would flip me over to the > newer gmail stuff that has all the new age APIs, integration, and google > assistant stuff available._

Aren't you able to upgrade directly to G Suite Basic? (I myself have both domains on legacy free Google Apps, and newer ones on paid G Suite.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Does Google offer a way to silo storage? I tried to email my wife last week, and she claims to have never gotten it. Investigating, we noticed she hadn't received an email in days. The culprit? Too many original size photos in Google Photos. It seems completely bizarre to me that taking pictures with incorrect settings can bring your email down. To Google's credit and my relief, in fairness, once space was cleared the missing emails did come in. Glad they didn't just start bouncing things!

</comment><comment><USER69> Glad to hear. Google is known for killing products right and left, Google should charge for products people love and rely on to make sure its 100% sustainable and won't go away.

</comment><comment><USER70> I do not use ANY cloud for my business/private accounts. I just host my main and backup servers here and there with providers I can switch to / from in a flick of a finger.

The only "cloud" I tolerate is buying stuff from the watching movies on Netflix and shopping on Amazon and likes.

Of course when consulting and client demands it I work with the Azure/Github/etc but that is the extent of my involvement. Anything that happens on that front becomes a client problem. Not mine.

</comment><comment><USER71> It is a good thing that Google is charging for it's products. They are converting users from products to customers. I am looking forward to Google Search Pro without any ads.

<comment><USER72> Removing doubleclick ads is something i'm more interested in. Search ads always seem to be contextual, never personalized. Sadly Google Contributor v1 failed [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> When did Gmail's ever-increasing storage allotment thing end?

<comment><USER74> From the article "It boosted the storage cap every couple of years, but in 2013 it stopped."

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Ahh yes, the random-tweet-that-proves-my-point tactic... You can find a tweet that "proves" your point for literally ANY issue. And, if you can't... just create a fake twitter account and tweet it yourself. Readers aren't even parsing the twitter account name so you don't even need to create a new account for each new tweet you want to cite.

There are a lot of reasons to be mad at google, having to pay for storage is not one of them.

</comment><comment><USER76> I began using a secondary Gmail account of mine as the Google Account tied to a free-tier Google Photos upload from my phone.

Bad idea. It's a shared pool of storage resources, which was quickly filled up by photos. Leaving Gmail with no storage. I suddenly was not getting any emails to that account, with no notifications.

Seemed VERY vindictive to suddenly not deliver 75KB emails because I had stored some photos.

</comment><comment><USER77> I've hit this recently and have been trying to delete enough stuff to make space - the google drive website is awful for doing this. So bad that I wonder whether it's deliberate. I've got 14.8GB of data on there and can't work out where it is.

On my computer, the sync'd Google Drive files come to less than one GB, so it's not that.

<comment><USER72> It doesn't show folders but clicking the text "14.8 of 15 GB used" or this link[0] will take you to a list of the biggest files, at least in drive. You can also go here[1] to see what services are using the most data.

0: [https://drive.google.com/drive/quota](https://drive.google.com/drive/quota)

1: [https://one.google.com/storage](https://one.google.com/storage)

<comment><USER77> Thanks. I came back to add the same info, found by googling, that the storage amount includes other Google services. (my space is mostly taken up by photos + gmail, because I've cleaned out google drive in an attempt to get the usage down, not realising that it wasn't the issue. Looks like I'll be spending hours painstakingly deleting photos and emails...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Trying to pay google for anything is a not a good idea, any kind of problem with the payment; your fault or not and they will lock you out of any google services permanently with no support, recourse or escalation.

</comment><comment><USER79> Easy solutions: don't store photos and other files in your Google account and/or download old mail by dragging it to a local folder in an email client like Thunderbird.

</comment><comment><USER80> Can I delete attachments in GMail without deleting the email? Googling gives a few potential ways involving the IMAP interface, but nothing straightforward.

</comment><comment><USER81> I think every business is doing that. Apple with annoying storage full messages which I had to cave in just last month and pay.

</comment><comment><USER82> Is there a way to delete attachments (but not the associated emails) from Gmail?

<comment><USER83> I believe you can do this by configuring an IMAP client and doing it there; then it'll sync the result. Thunderbird, for example, is quite scriptable.

<comment><USER84> Their IMAP implementation is terribly broken. It will most likely just create brand new messages and not delete the old ones. It's one of the many reason I moved off gmail (to self hosting) in 2012. Another being domestic spying .. which everyone has forgotten about apparently.

<comment><USER85> Can you clarify what you mean with domestic spying? Are you concerned about other people in your household having access to your Gmail account?

<comment><USER86> Domestic spying in this case is referring to the United States spying on its own citizens.

<comment><USER87> Which doesn't actually matter if you're in the 96% of people that are not from the USA.

This argument "but we don't spy on USA citizens so now we're all good and ethical" doesn't make much sense to me. If a Dutch company allegedly spies on foreign customers, it really wouldn't change my (Dutch) opinion about my privacy at that company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> It would be nice to take your email address to another provider, the same way it happens for cellphone numbers.

This could be email 2.0... First rule: 1)Do not require host name in the field name. email@example.com becomes johndoe.

<comment><USER89> So who owns the username?

Who runs the domain?

The beauty of email as protocol is that its independent. Nothing is stopping you from running you @cocoa19.com (given its non-occupied already).

<comment><USER88> Who owns the telephone number? Same concept.

If I don't want Google to run my email, I just switch providers, let's say protonmail or fastmail, etc. But I don't have to give a new address to all my acquaintances.

<comment><USER89> Government owns the prefix that is rented to businesses who wants to start their phone company (well at least in Europe).

Also the prefix in the phone number is exactly like a domain.

Even if there were no prefixes, one way or another you need a governing body that ensures no clashes occur and has power to decide on disputes. So no two companies try to assign same number to two different customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Is there a non-javascript version of this page?

</comment><comment><USER91> How easy is it to migrate these days?

<comment><USER92> Migrations always are somewhat "complicated". But cost-wise, I'm running my own domain with mail and a NextCloud instance for 3,99 € per month. Probably could get all of that even cheaper, but I like that webhoster. I recently switched my Contact from Google to NextCloud/CalDav, too, so I got rid of that tie, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Omg 99 cents a month for 50GB I'm outraged

</comment><comment><USER94> Google is one of the most brilliant businesses out there - they got everyone's data for free! now they are making people pay for it too, literally!

</comment><comment><USER95> Is Google finally switching out of customer acquisition mode and into monetization mode? A sign of slowing growth and increased payout to shareholders to come?

<comment><USER96> > Is Google finally switching out of customer acquisition mode and into > monetization mode?

No, that happened when they started selling ads.</comment></comment>


Build and Deploy Go Applications on Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/ko <comment><USER2> Curious if this is tightly wedded to $GOPATH, which thankfully seems to be dying with Go modules.</comment>


Wired: Four Mistakes Apple Made Slashing Pricing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/09/four-mistakes-a.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with Jobs over this article. Thousands of customers have already decided that $2,500 was the right price for a cell phone with 900 minutes a month for 2 years. They didn't care that this product had no third-party software available, nor that it was new, unseen, expensive, and locked to one phone company and music service.

Such users don't want a price cut--they love voting for usability by paying $599 for a phone. They expect others to pay less. All they want is to have tons of great new features and apps to come out over the next 2 years to justify _their_ purchase.

Thus, the more users and developers own the iPhone, the better. The more marketshare an Internet-enabled application or device gets, the more resources that the company and 3rd party companies will dedicate to supporting the product. And if the owners feel they got their $599 worth of fun and productivity, they'll be happy.

It's likely the complaints are coming from price-sensitive individuals who recently purchased the iPhone on the news that they could get out of the $1,920 contract and use it on a $30 T-Mobile plan. I think early adopters want this product to take off and will not hate Apple; it was clear that $599 was going to be the price-point for only a short time.

For me, $399 is too expensive as I like my current phone and plan.</comment>


We need more philosophy without facts - <AUTHOR> http://www.essien.org/blog/2008/12/07/we-need-more-philosophy-without-facts/

<comment><USER2> the author has failed to note one of the steps of the scientific process: creating testable predictions. If your hypothesis is right, what predictions does it make? what does it predict that current explanations do not?

</comment><comment><USER3> It's bad to back up your opinions with facts because reality has a well known liberal bias... or errr... our facts are some times wrong... or I'm sick of being proven wrong, my opinion is just as good as anyone else's, stop using facts against me!</comment>


TSA waste map - b-man http://images.onlinecriminaljusticedegree.com.s3.amazonaws.com/tsa-waste.gif

<comment><AUTHOR> Anything that furthers discussion of the HSA and TSA is a good thing in my opinion.

Too many people blindly follow whatever they are told to do, the best way to combat that is with a clear message that is repeated ad nauseum.

<comment><USER2> However, this is not a clear message. It's full of visual noise that provide little insight.

For example, the 3988 employees in the D.C. headquarters have an average salary of $103,852. That's $90,304 if you take out the single person who got paid $5.4 million. (Who was it? It's only mentioned as an anonymous statistic.) I also found "Total compensation for federal workers [in DC], including health care and other benefits, last year averaged $126,369, compared with $122,697 in 2009."

This seems to imply that TSA workers at the DC headquarters are being paid less than average for a federal worker in DC, so isn't that a good number?

The timeline towards the bottom is meaningless. Nothing happened in 2007 or 2008, and there was a rush of events in 2011? Not likely! It's only the things the author wanted to use. Plus, the length of the connectors between the dots doesn't mean anything. Oh! And why isn't there a connection from 2011 to 2012?

Then there's the strange insertion of Ron Paul into the discussion. So what if he raised $250,000 in three days? Lady Gaga's bracelet raised the same amount in the same time for for Japan Relief, and gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna did the same for his race. Does that mean that I should send money to Japan, or support McKenna for governor?

The claim that we could save $1 billion in hiring private security for the 35 biggest airports is quite suspect. The TSA budgets for FY 2011 was roughly $8.1 billion, of which $4,809 million was for 'aviation security.' The argument is that private security can reduce the price by 20%? By only changing security at 35 of the 450 or so airports with TSA staff? Color me doubtful.</comment></comment>


Paradise lost or found? - <AUTHOR> https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/billionaire-wilderness-paradise-lost-or-found/ <comment><USER2> I appreciate Billionaires that take city-size estates out in the country where there is plenty of space.

I feel this is a lot less controversial than urban mega-dwellings which can cause undue hardship for mere millionaires.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am curious to see what everyone interviewed for the book thought about things compared to 2008, 2016, and Covid 19.</comment>


Music festivals are the corporate dystopia we deserve - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/4215/music-festivals-dystopia-coachella <comment><USER2> The article mostly references Coachella, a very popular festival thats been around for a while. It fails to mention the many smaller festivals happening all the time, with far less noteriety or corporate sponsorship. Of course Coachella sold out, almost everyone in any industry will once enough money becomes involved. But to apply a blanket statement that modern music festivals are dystopian corporate propaganda machines is just plain wrong.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Phish's festivals (which were a big inspiration for the people who started Bonnaroo and probably Coachella too) do not resemble the description in this article at all. Plus there are a lot of smaller festivals going on all over. So who's surprised that a big corporate festival is corporatized?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This just seems to be anti-coachella but with a clickbait headline. Sure coachella is super corporate not really surprising. As the article itself mentions there are numerous other festivals happening throughout the country that are community focused, that are collaborative, that are not focused on consumption, etc... etc...

</comment><comment><USER5> I do wish we had the wild and free festivals they had in the 70s and 80s, but that's pretty much impossible now with all the regulations for legal festivals and the fact that organizers are legally responsible for any accidents that happen. An example of this is EDC Los Angeles 2010 where a 15 year old girl died (after sneaking into the festival and taking pills of ecstasy):

[http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/30/local/la-me-rave- dea...](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/30/local/la-me-rave- death-20100630)

Lawyers made a case of negligence against the organizers, they had a lengthy trial, the organizers settled with the parents outside of court, and the festival was never held in Los Angeles again. As a result of this tragedy and similar events, tight security is introduced, rules are put into place, and we get sterilized events in an attempt to tame the beast. But where do we draw the line?

Reading this article felt like the typical Coachella-hate circlejerk because it was more about Coachella than any other music festival, but a good point they brought up was the RFID chips on wristbands that allow them to track your location 24/7\. Sure it helps with logistics, but it also lets them track you back to your hotel, where you ate for breakfast, what vendor booths you visited, who you were with, etc. This in combination with the required Coachella phone app would allow them to accrue a pretty large amount of personal data.

<comment><USER6> > after sneaking into the festival

She did not sneak in, EDC did not check ID's and let her in.

<comment><USER7> That isn't so significant, the minimum age for the festival was 16 years.

Some European countries (primarily the Netherlands, some others) have "pill testing" where people can check their ecstasy is real. Ecstasy itself is fairly safe, it's when it's not actually ecstasy that it can be dangerous. A culture of harsh punishment for minor drug use is deadly: people won't seek help when something is wrong. In countries where teenagers aren't going to fear jail time, the affected person's friends are likely to seek medical attention sooner than in the USA.</comment></comment></comment>


Madoff fraud: Email trail shows Citigroup and JP Morgan warned of risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3262349/madoff-fraud-email-trail-shows-citigroup-and-jp-morgan-warned-of-risk/

<comment><USER2> How many organisations could stand having thier emails trawled through though...</comment>


For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/06/10/businessinsider-apple-icloud-microsoft-cloud-2011-6.DTL <comment><USER2> I don't know that anything Apple is doing is that revolutionary, the difference is that Apple and Jobs are _phenomenal_ at presenting the idea so that people actually _get_ it.

I'm sure there are a lot of Microsoft execs right now that are saying "we already do that with product X" and pretty pissed off that they were never able to sell product X over 5 years the way Apple did in an hour.

The bottom line is that Apple knows how to sell products to consumers, and Microsoft doesn't. Microsoft and Google both suffer from the same disease, they try to sell a product, not address a need. They might be the same thing in the end, and Microsoft might have even gotten there first, but Apple really _gets_ marketing.

<comment><USER3> I don't agree that this is about "getting" marketing. You may not mean it this way, but when people describe Apple as being a marketing company, the implication is that given the exact same product, Apple would succeed where Microsoft would fail. The truth is, Apple doesn't build the exact same products as Microsoft. What Apple does is what Dropbox did: They take a product and build what people actually want. People want A, B, and C, so Apple builds that. People don't care about technology X, Y or Z, so Apple doesn't build that or hides it under the covers.

[http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular- tha...](http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other- programs-with-similar-functionality)

People want their stuff to just be there. People actually don't care about the cloud or whatever, they just want their documents and their presentations and their calendar and their music to just be there for them on every device they use.

So Apple built that. I don't think this is about presenting the idea differently, I think it's about actually _doing_ the idea differently.

I go back to Joel Spolsky: When talking about Architects, he said: _Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like "Napster is a peer-to- peer service for downloading music" and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it's interesting because it's peer to peer, completely missing the point that it's interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away._

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html>

Remember that? Apple does, because with the iTunes Music Store, people could type the name of a song and listen to it right away, and Apple has made billions of dollars making that work simply and easily.

I agree that Microsoft execs probably _think_ they already do product X or Y or Z that Apple is doing, but I don't think they do X or Y or Z the way Apple does them: I think Apple does them _right_ much more often than Microsoft does.

<comment><USER4> I think the point was about non-obvious features. Lets take the Aero snap feature in Windows 7. How many would know that it is possible to drag a window to the sides and the top etc. and have it snap into place for split screen view or to maximize? Most of the people who know would be either geeks, or someone who saw someone else do it or discovered it by accident.

Contrast that to Apple's features, which are demoed in keynotes by Jobs and watched by a BIG percentage of Apple users. This is the reason that Apple is an ultra secret company with very high penalties for leaking things out. The hype that precedes every conference, with all the guessing etc. keeps Apple in the headlines and in people's minds. That's what people mean when they say Apple is a marketing company. Contrast that to Microsoft, how many people would watch them tout new features? They do make good stuff, but without their marketing, sales would be a lot slower.

<comment><USER5> Give me a break, the only people watching these keynotes are geeks.

<comment><USER6> My wife is a nurse. She has no real interest in technology, though she loves her iPhone. When a new iPhone or new major version of iOS comes out she always asks me about because all her nursey mates on the ward chat about it.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. A fellow co-worker, who doesn't even have an iPhone, loves watching Steve Jobs present keynotes due to his presentation style and they way he/apple demo's new technology. While she may be a producer in a digital agency she is certainly not tech savvy and not trying to keep up with the latest apple news.

 _edit_ grammer

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Microsoft killed their own brand.

Through their own efforts, Microsoft means Office, which means corporate. Unsurprisingly, their best consumer success is only tangentially associated with their name. "Microsoft Xbox" sounds like "Accounting Bouncy-house" to most people. There's a little bit of a dissonance when you remember that, yeah, Microsoft made this game system.

Even Windows, which is used by a majority of consumers today, feels like using a work tool at home, rather than something more personal. The way it communicates with you is like a colleague, not a friend. There are features that are the same as equivalent features on other operating systems, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But they are designed to make you "more productive", not to help you. Even when the mechanism is the same, it feels off as a personal device...

So, it's unsurprising that M advertises the Cloud heavily and it just feels like a "team-building" video, whereas A takes advantage of M's "to the cloud" ads building awareness to do a small press push and a brief description in a presentation and it's perceived as the second-coming.

And here's the thing, the "to the cloud" idea as marketing is a great idea! It's funny, and totally memorable -- but the Microsoft brand just kills it dead.

<comment><USER9> The big problem I have with the "to the cloud" ads is that there's no real call to action, just a vague message that this "cloud" thing seems neat.

It shows you a bunch of features under the vague branding of "Windows Live" and "The Cloud", but it's not really clear what you're supposed to buy or download to get them. Are you supposed to run out and buy one of those touch- screen desktops they're showing off to get the features? Is Windows Live a thing you buy in store? Are these features actually already in Windows 7, and if so, in which apps?

As a techie I'm aware of the distinctions between Windows, Windows Live, the Cloud, and the touch screen computers that feature prominently in these ads, but most people aren't.

Apple is great at clearly getting across the idea that say, iCloud is baked into Lion and iOS 5, so be prepared to get those things to get all the benefits of the iCloud. They give you a simple name to hang all of the benefits they talk about on, a concrete way of obtaining said named item, and a date to expect to go and buy it.

Microsoft, in contrast, can't seem to clearly articulate to people how to get the benefits they are being shown.

<comment><USER10> Yes. It seems that at some level, the degree of innovation is often similar and the difference between Apple and Microsoft is more a matter of design (which in my opinion is no small factor) and marketing than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have to agree with the Chronicle's basic point which is that Microsoft has talked about "cloud computing" for a long time and not delivered anything. Even a bad anything.

Its a very good example of the Innovator's Dilemma [1] in action, you've got some smart folks who see a future problem, and start creating interesting technology and vision around that problem, and then the reality that the company doesn't "need" it now gets in the way of pushing it from concept into the product stream. So it never gets to the 'commit' point where everyone is on board with shipping it to customers and trying to support it.

Why? Because that is "risky" but just tweaking the current product stream and adding a few features or targeting an adjacent market is much lower "risk."

As Clayton points out in his book innovation always loses in the 'risk' evaluation. So companies that are 'managed' always strive for optimum returns, and since you can't predict the future they are risk averse. Companies that are 'lead' on the other hand have the capability to ignore the risk in order to get to the rewards on the other side.

Startups have the risk meter pegged so it doesn't enter into their management decisions, instead they are focussed on execution and they flame out or succeed as they will and when they succeed they clarify the risk around their idea (if it flops the managers can pat themselves on the back for avoiding that land mine, if it takes off the managers wring their hands and wonder if they should have been able to forecast that success.

I think Apple may have combined some protocols and services into a useful adjunct to their product strategy. We won't really know until later when we see how it fairs. From the presentations and markitecture that Microsoft has espoused it seems like they could have done something similar but they didn't. It does reflect badly on how they are being managed, and that buck does stop at Ballmer. So it will be interesting to see how this affects his future there.

[1] <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060521996>

<comment><USER12> Huh? They've delivered lots of stuff. Some bad stuff, some good stuff. The real problem is the lack of cohesion.

<comment><USER13> I agree. It is the lack of cohesion that is killing them in the 'cloud'. Not just in the sense that there isn't a unified UX for all their stuff (though that is also true), but they are so non-unified that they often have multiple products that do the same basic things, causing end-user confusion and quite simply too many choices. [eg. Sync, Live Mesh, SkyDrive... which is right for 'me' if I'm a non-techie and don't understand the subtle differences in each? Who knows... I'll just use Dropbox!]

(FWIW I'm a big fan of Windows Live Mesh, but I've known more than a handful of non-techies who were just confused by it when I suggested it due to the related-but-different products that pop up when they are trying to learn more about it).

This does seem to be a problem they are aware of given the unification work they've done with the products I used as an example, but they still have a very long way to go on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone else feel like the cheers of success for iCloud are a little premature? It's amazing that since it's Apple we automatically believe the "No, really I mean it this time!". Shouldn't previous performance be taken into consideration (.Mac, MobileMe)? Boy who cries cloud?

Until iCloud is launched (not til the _fall_ ), all we have is old broken promises, vapourware, and some very expensive data centres.

I want iCloud to live up to the hype as much as anyone. But at this point the only thing we should be calling a success is the awesome power of the Jobs Distortion Field. He's the tech equivalent of a superstar athlete in their prime and the top of their game - evidenced by articles like these.

<comment><USER15> > vapourware

There's a beta. Register and download it.

<comment><USER16> How exactly do I get this beta? I have tried, updated iTunes and my iPhone, but see nothing. Do I need iOS5 to be able to use it, which I would need a developer account to get access to?

<comment><USER17> 10.3 should work. Go to the Preferences, then Store, and select Automatic Downloads for Music/Apps/Books. Also, you can go to the Apple Store and under Quick Links, you'll find a Purchased link. That'll let you re-download any Music/Apps/Books. It's not really cloud-y yet, but it's a start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem for Microsoft is that they continue to serve two masters: consumer users and corporate users. Corporate IT shops, especially within certain industries, can be exceptionally wary of anything that moves data outside their walls. Consumers are in general not nearly so picky. Corporations are MS's biggest customers and for years have had considerable influence on product direction. It's just not in Microsoft's DNA to ruffle the corporate customer feathers too much (whereas I get the sense Google and Apple almost take pleasure in it).

The biggest issue for MS isn't just that iCloud might be an embarrassment. It's a full on attack on the Windows monopoly. Apple telegraphed this in the WWDC presentation when they showed the stats on the numbers of people who don't own a personal computer (either Mac or Windows) in different countries around the world. The combination of iCloud + iPad means that the iPad can be a standalone device. This could potentially be huge in markets like China. How many SharePoint licenses does MS have to sell to make up for ceding a significant portion of the untapped Chinese PC market to the iPad?

<comment><USER19> I think there's a huge opportunity here, that Microsoft is trying to enter with their "Private Cloud" advertising, for the Software plus Services model that runs against servers you own or lease. Sold properly, that could work very well with corporate clients - "Here, your employees can enjoy transparent sync, always-available-anywhere access, with all data stored securely on your servers."

<comment><USER20> HP is also aiming for that same private-cloud target, building that with operating systems including Windows, WebOS, Linux, HP-UX, OpenVMS and others, with "cloud-mapped" applications from HP and partners, with the rack-n-stack hardware and networking gear (of course), the management tools that they've built and bought, a veritable blizzard of marketing buzz-phrases, and with the usual aggregation of other pieces and parts, as well as offering the softwarte and hardware (and cloud) services to keep it going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You know, the funny thing is that as nerds we tend to look at iCloud and say, "well I can already do that with Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Player". It's not revolutionary to us.

Yet, can you imagine how many sales Apple will be able to take from Microsoft just by saying, "all your files are backed up and synced automatically between your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac devices." No more worrying about backups, losing your photos, or losing your music.

Up until now GeekSquad and other computer repair businesses made a killing just on moving files between machines when you replace them or recovering lost files.

Apple is getting this right because it helps them sell more devices. Microsoft is getting it wrong because it would cost them a lot and wouldn't sell more copies of Windows or Office.

<comment><USER22> Actually, they were very careful to never use the word 'sync'. You don't "sync" anything, the files are just there, on all your devices, always up to date.

I think that is an important point.

<comment><USER23> Yes, it's a new HTTP method ...

        THERE HTTP/1.1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good god! Isn't it too early to prejudge iCloud? It will likely get a lot of users (it's mostly free and automatically integrated into their products after all), and it will likely succeed given mobility trends. But it is also too early to judge the future success or failure of Microsoft's cloud offering (though from what I'm seeing now, I guess it is likely to succeed as well).

At this point in time, Apple's success in the "software+cloud" model is the same as that of Microsoft (in that neither have seen mass wide adoption).

The use of "humiliation" in the title is an obvious exaggeration. But I guess without such title, that article wouldn't end up on the front page of HN.

<comment><USER25> It'll get a lot of users because a lot of people own iDevices. The product can completely suck and people will still use it because it's Apple and unlike MobileMe, it's free. Microsoft doesn't understand the cult following that Apple has.

<comment><USER26> Apple is far bigger than their cult following. If you attribute their success to the cult you are only fooling yourself. A cult alone doesn't buy 200,000,000+ iOS devices.

People generally do not use Apple products that suck, not everything they do takes off. They are just vocal about things that take off and very quiet on the rest, e.g. dismissing AppleTV as a "hobby" even though they clearly want it to take off.

You can attribute Apple's success to marketing, cult, whatever you want but at the end of the day Apple makes good products and puts a lot of care into them, and that's why they sell.

<comment><USER27> They do put a lot of care into their products, but their cult following does seem to play an important part in protecting their image. There's another thread on the front page of HN where people are describing how their Apple laptop power adapters burst into flames.

I am typing this on an iPad that periodically loses its wifi connection. Googling the problem yields dozens of complaints about this issue. Apple supporters on these forums blame wifi routers, even though the iPad is the only device with these issues.

I like the App Store, but, by default, I can't buy games on my iPad - why? Because I live in South Africa, and unlike every other device manufacturer with an app store here Apple hasn't applied for self rating games, which, according to most sources, is a straightforward process. Again, Apple and its supporters don't bother mentioning this little detail.

Apple does put a lot of care into their devices, but I also think there is a tendency to deny issues, to brush them over and to rely on the cult to impart an aura of invincibility.

<comment><USER26> Apple is not invincible, look at the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco.

I agree that it's bad that they deny most problems instead of being transparent about them. It can be extremely frustrating, you file a Radar ticket and then it goes into a black hole and the only feedback you might get is that someone else had the problem too. They are by no means perfect and neither are their products, I didn't mean to imply anything like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seems like this just is echoing Gruber from earlier this week:

"But Google's vision is about software you run in a web browser. Apple's is about native apps you run on devices. Apple is as committed to native apps — on the desktop, tablet, and handheld — as it has ever been."

<http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/demoted>

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I must have missed that earlier this week. Great concise summary of the long term philosophies of the two companies. Thanks.

<comment><USER29> if you haven't read this post from Paul Buchheit it sheds a lot of light on how the two philosophies might not be all that different: <http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/12/cloud-os.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was going to say something about this being flame bait, but I went back to MS's marketing material and it does seem like their vision marketing is at great odds from their execution: [http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/software- plus-...](http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/software-plus- services-full-story.aspx)

Unless by services they means software updates, CDDB updates, and downloading Office templates...

</comment><comment><USER31> The only thing, as an Android user, I drool over is the ability of iCloud users to have their music "uploaded" for free (without transferring any data). I signed up for the Google Music beta, and 20 minutes later deleted my account. Why? It was going to take several weeks to upload my 60GB of music, during which time I wouldn't be able to seed my torrents as easily. And, saturating my upstream kills my downstream bandwidth.

<comment><USER32> Sounds like your network is suffering from <http://www.bufferbloat.net/> .If your OS supports traffic shaping, you can probably fix this by limiting the upload speed there to a fraction under your actual bandwidth. E.g in Linux by using the tc command.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Google is providing facsimiles of applications in the web browser, along with remote storage.

Apple is providing smart remote storage that works with local applications.

Browser apps are clunkier than web apps, at least for now and the immediate future, so Apple has the apparent edge.

<comment><USER34> I disagree. Web apps are ubiquitous and people know how they work. Google doesn't do keynotes to announce that Gmail autosaves to the cloud... of course it does. Everyone has that expectation of web apps.

Microsoft got a lot of criticism for Windows 7 touch capabilities for taking something designed for mouse input and adding touch on top. It wasn't designed for that. I think that's exactly what Apple is doing here with iCloud. They are taking something that was designed for local access (native applications) and are attempting to shoehorn cloud into it.

iCloud will never work as seamlessly as a web application. Consumers will not be fooled. You can't go to your friends house and edit a document stored in iCloud. You can't pull up a Word document at the library. But you can access your Facebook account. You can open a spreadsheet in Office Web Apps.

Apple _is_ selling iCloud because they have to. Customer perception is not on their side on this one, finally. It's a very tough sell. 1) You have to commit to the complete Apple ecosystem. 2) You have to give up the ability to access your files anywhere. My guess is that most common consumers will not fully embrace iCloud. I don't expect it to be the same type of runaway success that iTunes and iPhone were. Rather it is more likely to be a moderate success: something people use when it's convenient but not something people change their habits to accommodate.

<comment><USER35> Web apps became popular because the desktop was too unwieldy for the average person to deal with. The browser was easy to deal with in comparison. The situation with iOS is completely different. The main advantage that web apps have is sharing and collaboration but that is easier to accomplish than a web app being as smooth and looking native to the average user.

<comment><USER34> The main advantage of web apps is ubiquity and ease. The former is of extreme importance when it comes to the cloud. If a user has to think about whether they can access a document at a later time, the cloud is failing them. If iCloud is to succeed it has to convince consumers that ubiquity is not that important. That's a huge thing to overcome and I feel it is being brushed aside in these iCloud praising articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I feel that if Microsoft had taken Bill Gates' book "The Road Ahead" and implemented a lot of the ideas in the book they could have preempted Apple and Google by several years! What's amazing to me is that the book is over 15 years old and just now a lot of what he mentioned in there with respect to the cloud is being implemented. Not by his company but Apple.

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes, "the cloud" is a vision that Microsoft has proclaimed and never been able to implement. It really required re-thinking the operating system. Microsoft's operating system was just too big and unwieldy to be re-engineered in this way. If Apple truly has pulled it off, a large part of the reason is that their OS was much more malleable and could handle this kind of thing.

But I think iCloud is more than "annoying" to Google. It shows Apple is competing with them head-to-head for cloud customers. And if there are network effects and permanent lock-in, then this is a very, very important battle.

Google really has written an operating system where you can take your data and configuration with you wherever you go. But you have to switch to a new computer and operating system and a completely different way of thinking!

Apple hasn't truly re-written the operating system the way Google has. They have made some important strides to helping people get their most important data into the cloud. Then they announce iCloud, over-hype it, and hope that the reality distortion field does the rest.

The big advantage that iCloud has, though, is Apple can leverage their entire installed user base. Millions of people can begin to use iCloud NOW, for $29! That's orders of magnitude simpler than having to buy a new computer. It's not a complete cloud solution like ChromeOS, but it might be good enough for now. And with Apple, the transition will be gradual and the learning curve will be easy.

So I think Google should be very worried about iCloud...

</comment><comment><USER38> Microsoft makes money from the desktop. The cloud threatens this, the current incarnation of the internet.

Over 10 years ago, the internet was supposed to undermine Microsoft, lead by Java. There was even a set-top box, that downloaded everything from the network (sound familiar?)

There was a joke about Java's ideal "write once, run everywhere", as "write once, debug everywhere". A similar joke about network-based computing's ideal of "access anywhere" is "no access anywhere". It's interesting that Apple's approach is _not_ network centric.

        1. The network is reliable.
        2. Latency is zero.
        3. Bandwidth is infinite.
        4. The network is secure.
        5. Topology doesn't change.
        6. There is one administrator.
        7. Transport cost is zero.
        8. The network is homogeneous.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Comput...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Computing)

Of course, Java has basically achieved its aim. And, one day, the network will be good enough - when it's as reliable as the bus in your PC (or, more accurately, as reliably as it needs to be for specific tasks).

<comment><USER39> What gives you the idea that the network isn't reliable now? It's been around for what, 3 or 4 decades? Maybe 10 years ago you'd have been correct, but nowadays the internet's been pretty well broken in.

And cloud computing, while new (at least in name), has built billion dollar businesses like Amazon and Google.

<comment><USER38> A review of Google's Chrome OS netbook noted poor network reception affected everything - even starting up. Of course, that's the mobile network.

Maybe you're right. I was thinking of the Amazon outages, but they weren't due to the network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> >> _All of the cloud computing services Google offers to consumers, like email, word processing and spreadsheets, happen within the browser._

Factually, this is incorrect. All of the services are _available_ within the browser, but there have been native mobile apps available for gmail/docs/calendar for quite some time now.

</comment><comment><USER41> the word cloud appears 43 times on that page ... Larry Ellisons rant (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOEFXaWHpp>) is more apt then ever.

<comment><USER42> I get pretty annoyed by its generic use, but I'm hopeful that we're seeing a narrowing of the term here.

Larry Ellison is right, we've had the "cloud" forever -- the network is the cloud -- but I think there's a good fit for the term "cloud" in the user space. "Cloud" describes a user experience. It's something that laymen can latch on to and begin to identify with an experience. While it abstracts detail, it's useful for marketing. The user may think:

"When I access Google Apps from this computer, my environment and experience are exactly the same as it is on any other computer. This is cloud computing."

The same would would apply for iCloud. Any device registered under your account works interchangeably.

Operating in the cloud means interchangeability of some underlying component that users are used to having to think about. E.g., "Oh, I'm not at my computer, so I can't access that document."

As an industry, we should try to narrow our usage the term to refer to services that deliver a location and device agnostic view of the _entire_ end- user experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Microsoft does poor advertising. Office 2011 has a pretty sick cloud integration although you need to be running windows to use it properly. <http://explore.live.com/windows-live-skydrive> Skydrive. And Office 365 is even further along apparently although I am not a Beta user. I would argue M$FT is ahead of both apple and google, if you run windows and have a win7 phone your integration is pretty insane at this point, toss in an xbox + live and everything is integrated really well. It's just not so cool to talk M$FT as it isn't as shiny. I have a Mac now and have for 6 years, for the 4 years before that I went to a high school with all macs, just trying to point out I am not biased. People just seem to want to love apple and hate msft and as a user of both I don't get why other than "apple's cool."

On a similar note, many people buy macs because they "don't have viruses" which has to do with market share not that they aren't vulnerable as we all know. Am I the only one who believes the Mac App Store is just the beginning of them closing off the system so that in the case they reach a substantial market share they can avoid virus control by making sure you download directly from them? If M$FT told dev's you can only put software on our machines if you give us 30% ppl would go nuts.

Just saying, the fanboyism keeps many users from being critical, in the end they are a company, question every move they make as with google and M$FT.

</comment><comment><USER44> Microsoft have released some great products in the last few years; Xbox and Windows Phone are a couple. Xbox has obviously done extremely well and WP is only going to grow with their partnership with Nokia. Correct me if I'm wrong, but these were both the result of starting from scratch with a smaller, more agile team who have permission to do something different and new. This works; even for Microsoft.

I also feel that maybe similar to Marco Arment's comments on the benefits of the new features in iOS on Instapaper, this may be the case for MSFT. If Apple can pave the way to making consumers' understand or at least appreciate what the cloud can do for them, then Microsoft and Google and others will have an easier time talking about their products. Before the iPhone came out, people couldn't see why and didn't want a "smartphone". Now everyone wants one, whether it's an iPhone or Android (and in the next few years Microsoft).

Microsoft does have some great products in this sphere I believe, Mesh and Skydrive being two. I haven't used either, but from what I've heard they do have some great potential. If off the back of Apple's announcement they can make them look good and continue developing on them, they will be able to sell it, even if its just by saying its the same as iCloud, but made by us. Apple does have a reputation of creating beautiful, easy to use products, but they are also seen as expensive and sometimes unneccessary. Android has taken off by being an alternative - Microsoft have the potential to be that alternative to iCloud. They have the pieces and experience shows MSFT does much better when they are the underdogs (Xbox and WP).

Just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER45> Microsoft had a shot at this with Hailstorm[1], it's too bad that it was killed.[2]

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb263932(v=vs.85).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb263932\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/business/technology- micros...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/business/technology-microsoft- has-quietly-shelved-its-internet-persona-service.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> This reminds me of when Microsoft was hyping touch user interface features in the run-up to the Windows 7 launch (without anything tangible in the field). Then Apple released multi-touch gesture pads on their laptops and furthered the reach of iOS.

</comment><comment><USER47> Ubuntu One, while not possessed of all the bells and whistles that Apple likes to hang on things, has already been hard at work in the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER48> I would be that guy who says "Who on a non-Mac platform would bother using this?" but then six months down the line we'll find out that Apple has some secret plan to port it and appeal to Windows-using iPhone/iPad owners and boy my face would be red.

</comment><comment><USER49> My girlfriend's first reaction to "iCloud" was "Is Mobile Me free now?". Its indeed fascinating to watch , a branding exercise & marketing effort doing it's job with the media & the bloggers to sell an under used platform with a bad rep.

</comment><comment><USER50> I think iCloud will be great for Microsoft, they are including vista and windows 7 in icloud. I know lots of people with PCs and iphones/ipads.

<comment><USER51> Then if it takes off, Microsoft will be locked into a competitor's platform. If someone's using Windows + iCloud, what's to keep them from switching to the (presumably better, more integrated) Mac + iCloud?

<comment><USER25> Price, converting all their Windows programs to Mac versions (or finding an equivalent), and the fact that they may not want a Mac. People I talk to own a PC because Apple doesn't offer the choices they want in a computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Google _is_ the "cloud".

Apple gives the "cloud" branding and a logo.

</comment><comment><USER53> MS has been humiliated by Apple for over a decade now. Bill Gates wrote an entire book about the home of the future. And how digital devices would rule it. Who came across and actually did that? iPod, iPhone, iPad and the AppleTV are all very successful and the "digital hub" is basically the same thing that MS has been saying.

MS has been doing a lot of catch-up "also-ran" devices trying to do what Apple has done. It's unfortunate that they could never leverage their huge lead to make it happen.

<comment> DanI-S Microsoft need to do more of what they did with XBox - spin off a smaller, more agile brand that doesn't invoke the image of dusty CRT monitors and lumbering corporate IT.

Apple's brand identity works for selling consumer products, but nobody really finds value in the fact that their music player or phone was branded Microsoft. Their brand's strength isn't in consumer tech.

Apple didn't manage this by standing still, either. Their brand used to be Apple Computer, and their logo was a cheesy rainbow. That doesn't cut it with 21st century consumers, so they redrew their image.

<comment><USER54> Branding is a relatively small issue. The bigger problem is that Microsoft's products simply don't "just work" as digital hub solutions. You _can_ make them work if you want to muck around with home groups, addresses prefixed with //, domains, confusing file ACLs, and "shares". But it takes a lot more effort than just putting in your iTunes username and password, which is how you hook up your Apple devices.

The downvotes are coming from . . . people who think setting up MS home sharing is easy? (Maybe people who have never done it -- I have.) Or people who genuinely believe branding is more important than the product being branded? I have no use for either of these perspectives but I am curious.

<comment> DanI-S I'd argue that, through failure to gain consumer traction, Microsoft just haven't been able to create the network of tightly related devices that Apple has. Thanks to their consumer focus, Apple have an entire platform sharing the same operating system, individual devices developed somewhat in harmony. Microsoft, attempting to corner several markets separately, has competing teams working on entirely unrelated products whose connectedness is incidental.

There was a Steve Jobs keynote from the 1990s posted the other day in which he outlined his vision of a networked device ecosystem. It is very significant that they built the line of devices before they tried to market the backbone. Microsoft was thinking about this concept for just as long, but they never really had the platform.

Edit: To reply, the key is that product follows from brand and marketing. The reason Apple's products are connected so well is that they're all targeted at one market. Microsoft target several, so their products are developed in bubbles.

Edit: To reply again, I think we may be arguing the same thing, but our disagreement is in the reasoning. I believe that Microsoft's lack of a coherent product is due to an attempt to sell their vision to several markets at once; it makes connecting the dots very difficult. Apple's (assumed) success lies in their coherent targeting of a single market, through their strong consumer brand. Both of them are selling a vision; Apple get to amplify this by designing products that fit with their brand.

It's a shame we can't continue this conversation further due to the weird commenting system.

<comment><USER54> Right. Like I said, the problem is not branding but that Microsoft's products do not play well together like Apple's TV box, speakers, wifi base stations, automatic backup devices, phones, computers, and music players, all of which hook up to each other basically automatically (all you have to do is enter your iTunes account info).

To reply to your edit: I think that brand and marketing come from product. You cannot market a feature that does not exist, nor can your brand gain a reputation for an attribute that your products do not have. But underneath, product, brand, and marketing all stem from vision and priorities. Apple and MS shared the same vision, but Apple made this part of that vision a priority. Therefore their products reflect it, their brand gains a reputation for it, and their marketing can highlight the features that support the vision. Microsoft made this part of their vision a talking point, thus their products don't reflect it, their brand lacks the reputation, and any marketing that tries to highlight connectedness of devices rings hollow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Microsoft has a marketing problem, they have a lot of cloud services like Skydrive, Live Mesh etc. but are not able to grab the attention of consumers or media like Jobs is able to, on stage.

However, Windows 8 seems to be coming with a ton of integrated cloud features so I don't know about the humiliation part.I just don't see that their marketshare is affected more than 1% specifically due to the cloud services in Lion.

<comment><USER55> Taking all Apple's emphasis on design, marketing, etc., aside. It starts very simple: Steve Jobs looks like a sympathetic guy on stage that we could easily emphasize with. Steve Ballmer looks, let's put it bluntly, unsympathetic and rude.

This difference is clearly visible in every fiber of marketing material from both companies. Apple marketing feels friendly and fresh, while Microsoft's tends to feel aggressive. Sometimes Microsoft attempts to copy Apple's marketing style, but it feels faked or superficial.

Don't underestimate company's 'soul'.

<comment><USER56> I don't think the issue here is that Jobs looks frail while Ballmer looks like he's been eating for two. People aren't buying tens of millions of iPhones out of pity.

Apple has made its recent success off developing and marketing products that consumers want to buy and that make them happy to use (look at how many people by an iPod or iPhone and go on to become Mac owners.) Microsoft mostly makes it way off of enterprise sales and bundling with PCs. That's fine, but it doesn't tend to lead to a culture that creates products that end consumers get really juiced about.</comment></comment></comment>


This is the year action cameras and 360-degree videos collide - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/9/10742974/nikon-gopro-action-cameras-360-video-ces-2016 <comment><USER2> The problem with 360 videos is the resolution. Doing some back of the envelope, very approximate estimation, 4k video (like the new Nikon 360 camera) gets you only 426 x 240 resolution when you're looking at any region of the video.

To get something nicer, you'd need to get to 8k, which is 888 x 480 per viewable region. Currently no consumer video cameras that are anywhere near that resolution.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think 4K looks better than what you're describing. The image looks crisp and HD to me in the following 4K 360 video, for example, perhaps in the 720p range for the viewable area: (be sure you're set to 4k 2160p before panning around the playing video, it should work on desktop browsers):

4K 360° cockpit view flying Fighter Jet [https://youtu.be/NdZ02-Qenso](https://youtu.be/NdZ02-Qenso)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No mention of Google Cardboard? This seems like the easiest way to play back these kinds of video.

<comment><USER4> no mention of resolution either, you need 2x 4K sensors to get good results. Current 2x 1080 cameras produce blurry mess

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zas3TlxYk2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zas3TlxYk2c)

<comment><USER5> The video mentioned the Nikon was 4k UHD.</comment></comment></comment>


First US death from Covid-19 confirmed in Washington state - <AUTHOR> https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/first-covid-19-coronavirus-death-on-us-soil-in-washington-state-12486772?cid=telegram_cna_social_28112017_cna <comment><USER2> (Shameless plus) COVID-19 latest statistics: [https://coronavirus.gg/](https://coronavirus.gg/)</comment>