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... what a surprise. People seem to think that Google didn't anticipate data hoarders, but in fact, this just seems like a standard hook to get people using a service. (Or a bait and switch, if you're less charitable).

If anyone here is looking for a Drive alternative, I highly recommend the open source, P2P https://syncthing.net/. I use it to synchronise files between Linux, Android, FreeBSD devices including my home NAS.

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I don’t think Google cares to have gotten, or cares if they lose the data hoarder market. For everyone else, it’s not a bait and switch because nothing changed, and for the data hoarders it’s not like it’s a bait and switch because there’s no bait. They knew this day would come, as it always has with every other service that’s ever made a similar offer. The TOS already limited usage in a number of ways, but Google didn’t bother to enforce them because the data hoarders hadn’t made enough of a nuisance of themselves to bother.

I don't think data hoarders have ever been a viable market for unlimited storage. That's literally giving money away for free.

Most of the hoarder community has already been anticipating this for some time, so it's no surprise to us.

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