Two statements that are simultaneously true:
- Big companies like Google are wrong to offer stuff like “unlimited storage” and lifetime plans.
- Individuals are naïve to expect that the services they consume will remain free and unlimited forever.
That said, I am just about always going to come down on the side of the people who believed that they would be able to store their terabytes of data on Google Drive (or whatever) for free forever.
The power imbalance between a giant tech company with billions of dollars falling out of its pockets and an individual user is so comically large that I feel like almost no amount of individual malfeasance or stupidity is enough to tip the scales in the favor of these corporate behemoths.
Should users have been more skeptical and taken precautions? Sure. But pretty much all the blame here lies with Google and rest of the big tech companies. They have been regularly running this scam for years while actively marketing the notion that the line always goes up.