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0 pointsmirimir6y ago0 comments

OK, I did see that.

But I don't understand why Google would do that. For most users, aren't Google Docs files a substantial part of their usage? Or do people mainly store backups?

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ShinTakuya6y ago

Simple, Google wants to encourage people to use their office suite so they indirectly subsidise it in this way.

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rocky11386y ago

FTA "A single google doc can store about a million characters. This is around 710KB of base64 encoded data."

This means that in order to reach the limit of the drive space given away for free, they'd need something like 15,000 Google Doc files (15GB) if they counted toward your space limit. I doubt a lot of paying customers even reach that.

The real limit (file size) is reached by binaries. Videos and PDFs, usually.

mirimirOP6y ago

I see.

But then, I suspect (as others note) that Google will notice when you have 50GB of Google Docs full of base64.

Seems an iffy way to store stuff.

londons_explore6y ago

There's a good chance they won't. For privacy reasons, engineers can't just start peering at your files.

They'd have to write a base64 detectors and automate the detection and banning of the accounts without the engineer ever seeing your files.

Any bugs in that code, and they'll ban innocent people.

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ShinTakuya6y ago

Simple, Google wants to encourage people to use their office suite so they indirectly subsidise it in this way.

1 more reply

rocky11386y ago

FTA "A single google doc can store about a million characters. This is around 710KB of base64 encoded data."

The real limit (file size) is reached by binaries. Videos and PDFs, usually.

mirimirOP6y ago

I see.

But then, I suspect (as others note) that Google will notice when you have 50GB of Google Docs full of base64.

Seems an iffy way to store stuff.

londons_explore6y ago

There's a good chance they won't. For privacy reasons, engineers can't just start peering at your files.

They'd have to write a base64 detectors and automate the detection and banning of the accounts without the engineer ever seeing your files.

Any bugs in that code, and they'll ban innocent people.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse