There were a lot of great longer videos that were hosted on Google Video leading up to their acquisition of Youtube. Now, I won't argue that the majority of the videos there are worthwhile, but it seems to me that a company whose self-professed goal is to "organize the world's information" really shouldn't be in the business of deleting large swaths of it. Google isn't exactly hurting for storage capacity; what harm could come from rolling the videos hosted there over to Youtube? It certainly couldn't hurt the average quality of Youtube.
I'd hope that the company that runs Google Books, that saw the value in ReCaptcha, that has cached the majority of the public-facing internet, that has mapped most regions of the world, and that provides satellite images of most of its surface wouldn't erase that data simply because they'd like to reuse the harddrives.
I have to agree. Two weeks notice? WTF, Google. The evil meter is dancing.
If you want people to trust you with their data, you should demonstrate more responsibility. And just because the hosting's been "free", doesn't mean you haven't made your pound of flesh off the advertising (speaking generally, at least).
Here's a thought: Shove it through YouTube. Heck, just keep the data around and convert and cache when an item is hit (those who really want it will wait out / return after the conversion). I suppose you need to be able to tie back to Video accounts for ownership, DMCA, etc. Still, there should be a better solution. And a couple of weeks' notice simply isn't fair. What if someone's tied up? On vacation? They're hosed.
Put it this way: Demonstrating yourself to be a source of "public" data loss, is rather bad PR.
They gave notice years ago that they were phasing it out. You haven't been able to upload anything in years. Frankly, I'm surprised it took them this long.
Well, then, I guess that compensates somewhat. Still, I'd suggest announcing the hard date 3 or more months in advance (I'd prefer 6). People become busy and complacent. And people may not quickly realize that a work they value has been abandoned by its original poster.
On the upside, they are "allowing" downloads. I guess I should acknowledge that as a serious positive.
I may have become sensitized by years of management that had similar attitudes towards changes. Push, push, push... until suddenly, we're abandoning this, NOW.
Different settings, but not entirely dissimilar feelings evoked.
I'd hope that the company that runs Google Books, that saw the value in ReCaptcha, that has cached the majority of the public-facing internet, that has mapped most regions of the world, and that provides satellite images of most of its surface wouldn't erase that data simply because they'd like to reuse the harddrives.