Unlimited is a Ponzi Scheme
I thought this was relevant to many of the offers we see in the low end world.
Recently Google Photos ended their unlimited storage. You shouldn’t have been shocked, because unlimited is more often than not an unsustainable Ponzi Scheme.
Comments
That blog does a bad job of saying why Google's decision to end unlimited free storage for photos is a Ponzi scheme.
Google gave something for free to people. Later, they decided to end this, presumably because it was costing them too much. Where's the Ponzi scheme in this?
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
Which, they knew before they offered it. However I would think the vast majority of its users would assume it would remain free, so sign up and used their services.
I dont have a horse in this race, but I would like it if these offers were a bit more transparent, an example would be "free for 5 years, if you use more than 15GB, you'll need to pay $16 per year for 100GB thereafter"
Are we to assume that google will eventually do away with the "free" 15GB tier? afterall they initially offered free "unlimited" storage based on a counter that increased by the day(?) (I cant remember the interval). It then became 15GB.
That's a different objection. But it still doesn't make what Google did a Ponzi scheme.
Anyway, it's a natural fact of life that plans and priorities change over time. There's a web page somewhere about all of the free products that Google has discontinued over the years. But none of them could sensibly be considered a Ponzi scheme.
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
That's a pretty bad article. A pretty bad example as well.
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I probably agree, but they still knowingly offered something that is unsustainable
Even granting (for the sake of argument) that they "knew" this, it wasn't a Ponzi scheme.
In any case, if anyone bothered to read the ToS, they were aware that the conditions could change (with advance notice) at any time.
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
That article really is piss poor, but that aside where are you getting that statement from or is just your own opinion that it is unsustainable?
Looking at the available stats, around 80% of people are not even close to the new 15GB cap. By the sounds of it, Google is simply going to capitalize on the remaining 20%. You could question the morality of that but I don't really understand why it could be seen as unsustainable or a Ponzi scheme.
If you want someone to blame for the storage changes at Google, go yell at the r/datahoarder crowd for tossing 100s of terabytes or petabytes on cheap G Suite accounts. At a certain point it just gets out of hand and Google can't eat the costs and has to re-evaluate their offerings.
Unlike other actual storage scams where they sell you lifetime deals and disappear overnight, Google is giving plenty of notice and has a great takeout service for retrieving all of your data. Or you can upgrade to a paid plan and they'll stop bothering you.
There's a good chance that Google, Facebook and others are going to face additional government pressure/get broken up with the new administration - so they might be trying to make sure each sector of the company is profitable on its own if/when that happens.
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Adding to others points,
They informed the change more than 6 months in advance, with the ability to upload as much as you want until then.
That has to be appreciated, because it allows the user enough time, to either move away or upload all there images, without getting counted.
Enjoy meditation without religion for one month.
Maybe Google wants tons of pictures from the start to train its AI?
Now AI gained a successful birth so Google stopped the unlimited...
Yep.
Isn't this the logic behind them suddenly charging for recaptcha?
Francisco
A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. The scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from product sales or other means, and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds.
How is a free product ponzi again? If