However, the fact that other desktop sync clients from other providers exhibit similar performance characteristics possibly indicate that it's not as easy to solve as a naive first pass would assume.
Because Google doesn't have the resources to tackle challenging problems? lol.
A difficult to solve problem on its own is one thing, but the comically awful support Google offers indicates that it's more likely a "we don't care" versus a "we don't know how" problem.
I'm not an expert in that specific bug, so I won't speculate publicly - but the memory issue is something that has seen steady commits over time from various people who are plugging away diligently at it. It's a bit of a moving target, and there is a tradeoff. The customer's case is a bit of an edge case, and at the extreme end of things.
In terms of the customer support side of things, I don't know all the specifics of what happened, so I won't comment further. However, my details are on HN, so feel free to PM if you want me to see what I can do internally.
While I cannot say anything regarding Box.net, the Dropbox app on Windows is one of the best working programmes I have installed. It has never crashed and doesn't slow down my computer, no matter how much it has to sync. I never understood why Google isn't able to copy Dropbox behaviour even after years. GDrive is still able to slow down my computer notably if I sync a lot of files and it tends to lose the connection every week or so until I restart it.
If you then look at how reliably Google Search or Gmail work, the answer can just be that Google doesn't care, not that they couldn't do it.
What possible reasons could there be for your support team denying the refund that may have been left off that page? Hypothetically speaking.
What possible information would you need? You are basically saying you don't trust OP's account of what happened.
Did you read the time line? Even if his issue is directly being worked on, which is doubtful if you look at how many layers of clueless tech support this apparently goes, this is terrible customer support. If you promise to reply in 48 hours, reply in 48 hours. Give the customer compensation for the months the product did not work properly and maybe a gift voucher for all the effort they put into helping to solve this bug.
but a friend maintains a studio and they use your biggest competitor. they sync over a million instrument sampler files per composer. granted that the initial upload and new drive takes almost a week working exclusively on the first sync, but after that it works.