The more you upload, the more they know, and why Google should pay us

Categories: Data StoragePosted on August 10th, 2007

Are you an Online Data Storage (ODS) rogue? Do you realize whoever controls the data (the cloud) controls the information? Google has just announced a new service to increase your storage amounts online, more comments on Techmeme.

Considering that storage is inexpensive, almost commodity like, the following prices are extremely high:

“When you reach the limit of free storage (i.e., 1GB for Picasa Web Albums, 2.8GB for Gmail), consider this your overflow solution. Plans start at $20/year for 6GB (yes, $5 cheaper than before), with larger plans ranging up to 250GB. If only testing everything were this easy.”

Why are they high? Because I think future Online Data Storage companies will Pay You to Upload Data, whoever owns the information, and can index it, has information to re-use the content for marketing. I’m not the only person who thinks this is not a wise buy.

I hope my friends at Hitachi, Seagate, and other online data storage companies are watching.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 6:38 am and is filed under Data Storage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments

Toby Getsch

"whoever owns the information"

not

"whoever controls the data (the cloud)"

I think you're mashing two concepts together. I think they should remain distinct. One entity may have both of those, but those rights should remain distinct.

Google does not own the information, and no storage company should own the information, unless the users want to give up their rights and then allow the storage company to have them. That's why content ownership and rights management are so huge. IMO, the rest is just semantics and people who feel false entitlement.

Google "should" nothing.

Google may be smart and find a way to leverage data and get rights to information that they can then get money for, but I don't see them paying us. The advertising model would have to get so huger for them that they have an overflow on top of what they make from advertising to risk paying consumers for even more data. I don't see that reaching critical mass during my lifetime.

(But, maybe I'm wrong and somehow I can get rich that way too!) :D

jeremiah_owyang

Toby

"Should" vs "What will happen" are two different things.

Did you ever stop to realize how much information Google has about you and all the queries you/I make, from which IP, at what time?

It's immense.

David Berkowitz

I figured you'd pick up on this. I'm working on my next column (or set of two or three columns, depending on the format), and I already mentioned you. Now I've got a more current post to link to. Separately, check this out - Google will no longer sell TV shows. Don't you love the timing? http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/technology/11...

jeremiah_owyang

David

Always good hearing from you. I'm so predictable huh?

I'm not sure what this means for Google.

I guess I'll learn more from your article!

Peter

Good points... but what about a choice of two options: get really cheap storage which Google is allowed to harvest in one way or another (for profiling etc.), or pay a premium price and get a guarantee that it's just your data and nobody else's...?