Damn you, Google with your 100 GB promotional space!

[blackomen]

This is one of the sneakiest and most disgusting scams that supposedly reputable companies can pull.  It happened with Dropbox and Onedrive in the past and now Google.

First, you buy a product, usually a new smartphone or something and when you first log in to your Dropbox, Onedrive, and/or Google accounts, it instantly offers you a lot of extra space that's temporary (like 100 GB) which expires some time in the future like a year.  Over time, you forget that your account has been temporarily allowed to keep extra files and if you have automatic backups enabled, you end up uploading a ton of stuff onto these accounts not knowing that you're using this "borrowed" space.

Eventually, your time is up and you're forced to pay up or they threaten to delete your files or even disable your account.  At least with Onedrive or Dropbox, I ended up moving the files from the online storage to my local computer temporarily before I found a new home for these files, but now Google not only is threatening to delete my photos and files on their Drive but also disable my Gmail until I pay up for their premium storage.

Just wanted to let you guys know of this scam that these supposedly reputable companies are trying to pull.  At least I have an additional Google account that my university offered as part of their Alumni association program and I'm spending my Sunday cleaning up my main Google account and moving all of my extra files to that one.

Did some former mafia guy join Google?  This sounds like pure extortion to get me to pay for extra storage space!

[PDXTabs]

Are you joking? It's $2/month. It is the cheapest online storage that you can find. The cheapest Dropbox plan is $12.50/month.

[blackomen]

It's not about the cost, it's just the way they put you in a bind to force you to pay up.

[Paul der Krake]

Of all the questionable stuff done by Google, this is the thing that riled you up? They don't even delete your files, it's just inaccessible until you pay a month's worth of storage to get them back out.

[shuffler]

This is one of the sneakiest and most disgusting scams that supposedly reputable companies can pull.

... giving you a free trial of their service is sneaky and disgusting?  Huh.  That thought would never have occurred to me.

Seems about the same as a physical self-storage place.  Lots of deals where "the first month is free!".
If you take advantage of that first month offer, and then leave your crap in their storage facility without paying for the 2nd and 3rd months ... yep, they're gonna auction off or toss out your stuff.

Sounds like you'd prefer that they either make you pay up front, or not offer a free trial.
Weird to be so bent out of shape about a free trial.

[jim555]

Considering these companies examine all the data in your "free" space I would never put unencrypted data in the cloud.

[Khaetra]

Sorry, but this falls onto you for "forgetting" it's temporary.  While it may sound silly, anytime I sign up for something that is 'promotional' I write on the calendar when it's set to expire.  As the date draws near, I can then decide if it's worth paying for or go get my stuff and cancel.

There are plenty of things to be outraged about.  This isn't one of them.

[eostache]

I have a newish Chromebook and it gave me the free 100gb. I just ignore it and pretend I still only have the 15gb of free space.

I'm more annoyed that they no longer sync Google Photos with Google Drive. The photos that synced in Drive did not count toward the free 15gb of space. I was keeping my photos filed in Drive but I have abandoned that now.

[LateToTheParty]

That’s how they get you.

[rantk81]

Not a scam at all. They are very upfront about the cost, the trial period, etc.
I’m grandfathered into some legacy plan that gave me 36GB for $5 per year, with a special “early adopter bonus” and “paid user bonus.” Google has since discontinued the grandfathered plan, but they notified me I could keep the 36GB plan for free... at least until I wanted to upgrade to the 100GB plan.  I don’t have any need for that yet, so for now it’s still free!