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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

So... what did "Always" mean, exactly?

I would think that it means they have an offering that you won't be charged for, not that they will offer the exact same thing perpetually. Like Red Robin has free refills on many sides doesn't mean that those sides will be something they serve forever.

Not limited to exactly 12 months, like our competitor's promotion.

Were you expecting a massive evil corporation to keep spending $50 every month on you forever?

> Were you expecting a massive evil corporation to keep spending $50 every month on you forever?

When they offer something "always"... yes? Are "always" and "forever" not synonyms?

I'm not arguing about the economics or motivation, just pointing out that simple language says that they lied.

Were you expecting anything to last forever? The sun's gonna explode, you know.

Expecting someone to lie doesn't mean rolling over and refusing to acknowledge it. Not unlike people making the expected reactionary cynical commentary on internet forums still demands a response.

I mean, you're very perceptive! But that's not very interesting, it's sort of the price of admission here at HN. Oracle lying in its product naming is more so.

When Amazon says something is always free in the free tier, it's opposite things that are free for the first 12 months of your account.

But... does Amazon say things in their free tier are "always" free? I don't think they do. This was an Oracle lie.

If you take a service that you told someone was "always free" and start charging them for that, that's a lie. It just is. I'm gobsmacked that this community views this as acceptable marketing. Is this the moral foundation of our new era of startup overlords?

> over and refusing to acknowledge it.

I guess one option would be to vote with your walled and stop paying them? Oh.. wait..

Whatever Oracle is in general this specifically (and the reduced 2 CPU + 12 GB tier ) is still massively more "generous" than what any other cloud provider gives you for free.

In Canada we have a grocery chain called Superstore that posts many products as "Always $x.xx" but the prices have continually been increased over the years. I wouldn't call it a lie but it sure feels dirty and unethical. They used to use the president of the family corporation in all their ads too, but don't anymore and that's probably because he knows they're in the wrong on this and many other things (like the price fixing scandals).

Ah, my favorite exception to fraud: Puffery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

If everyone knows it's a lie... well then I guess it's not a lie anymore, is it?

I kind of understand why the law takes this position. If you really think about it's hard to imagine how to truly fix this. But it still feels pretty dirty.

Origin of "puff peice", today I learned.

There's a fallacy in there somewhere.

I bet they're not spending $X/m on any of your free things, they're sitting on underutilised resources they're paying for anyway at probably very handsome rates.

At worst this is included in their marketing budget.

Conditionally

If you have it, it'll always be free.

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