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Yahoo Offers All-You-Can-Eat Storage and Bandwidth
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Feb 08, 2008 03:20 PM
from the until-your-traffic-spikes dept.
from the until-your-traffic-spikes dept.
Lucas123 writes "Yahoo this week opened up a new monthly Web Hosting service for small and medium sized businesses that allows unlimited hosted storage capacity and bandwidth for $11.95 a month. Yahoo had been charging $12 a month for 5GB of disk space and 200GB of bandwidth; $20 a month for 10GB disk space and 400GB of bandwidth; and $40 for 20GB disk space and 500GB bandwidth.."
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Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bunches of online hosting companies offer "unlimited" services with as much space or bandwidth as you need- and all these companies have a disclaimer in their TOS that explains they can't use more than
Eventually, yes, they get brought down. Law suits, investigations, what have you. They will eventually add their limits to the fine print, just like everybody before them. The catch? Everybody with the host will suffer horrible service up till the day the limit is defined, and after that, it probably won't get much better. That is, if you're not already kicked off their service for using too much of the unlimited service. Anybody not completely disgusted with the service at this point will most likely be offended that their freedom is being taken away and may leave out of protest alone.
You'd think Yahoo would learn better than start a huge marketing campaign on a service they can't possibly keep profitable. Think about it- Yahoo Music Unlimited just closed! It was a nice idea, except it wasn't making them money! This is a huge PR disaster waiting to happen.
Let's just take them up on the offer and get rid of them. Somebody call Google and explain to them there's a new host that will host Google's search engine for $12. We'll see how long Yahoo stays unlimited.
"Unlimited" my ass (Score:5, Funny)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.
Parent
Re:"Unlimited" my ass (Score:5, Funny)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.
You keep misquoting that movie. I do not think it means what you think it banana.
Parent
Re:"Unlimited" my ass (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Now I'm not saying this isn't a potentially foolish move, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they thought this out, to a degree.
On a side note, you bring up Comcast and Yahoo! Music... To very different beasts. How can you apply
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone remember Netcom? (Score:3, Interesting)
And we've never gone back. Dial-up pretty much was forced away from a per hour rate to a flat $20 fee for unlimited. And the whole industry was moved to a $15-$25 price point.
Wasn't until broadband came around that prices were able to be raised again.
It's not always an impossible thing...
Re:Anyone remember Netcom? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a good example, since dial-up usage doesn't scale very much. You only have 24 hours/day, and your bandwidth is no more than 56k.
So, you see, if your average user stays connected 3 hours/day, the heavy user will only use 8x time amount. Now, if you consider broadband and your average users transfer 2GB/month, a heavy user will easily transfer 400GB/month. Thats 200 times more. And according to a quick calculation here (could be wrong), it is theoretically possible for a user to use 1.3TB/month on a 4Mbps connection (note: actually bandwidth usage, including protocol overhead etc).
If you consider webhosting, things get even worst. An average user will store 500MB, and transfer 2GB/month (if that). While a heavy user can easily reach 500GB and transfer 2TB/month. In both cases, 1000 times more (or 1024, if you like).
Unlimited can easily become a real nightmare.
Parent
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the two are connected. It could be that closing their music service is leaving them with some extra bandwidth/storage/servers and they'd rather bring in some revenue then let those resources sit idle.
Parent
Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Funny)
everyone knows that there's no edit button on slashdot
Parent
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
So in other words, websites and databases (for websites) only (will they police this?). Yet there are companies out there offering unlimited disk space for remote storage, and how they go about this, I have yet to understand. Perhaps something along the same lines as Yahoo's former offering?
Parent
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if they police this, it appears I can now start that web-hosting business I always wanted to start: I'll give you 10TB of storage and 1 TB/month throughput for, say, $1/month. If I can sell that to 13 customers then I'm ahead, right? And I'm a legitimate business, right? So they can't cut me off, right?
(Since it has to go through HTML, it'll run through some html-based web-management system like plesk, but at the rates I'm offering, how could you say "no"...)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Put all of your data in plain text "configuration" files encoded into base64 and accessed via php scripts ;)
C'mon, they are just trying to help you to be more efficient on CPU and RAM resources.
How longs it going to last? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How longs it going to last? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Where's CmdrTaco? (Score:5, Funny)
The Quota Super-sizing Trend (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone already knows that these resources are oversold, so it really was just a matter of time before someone said "fuck this, all the bandwidth/disk/whatever you can use on a shared server for one low monthly fee".
The catch is that they =will= shunt people off onto dedicated servers if/when the need arises, and then they'll crucify them costs-wise (and I wouldn't be surprised to find in the small print that they have the right to move your account, at whim, to best se
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or is it an effective way to attract customers from HostGator who find that 1,000 gigs of disk space is simply not enough? Almost nobody needs this, but some might be influenced by it.
I don't think it's so much about attracting customers who need a kazillion gigabytes of space as much as it is attractive to people who just want a service that works without any added costs. I mean, how is a regular guy supposed to know if 50 gigs per month is enough or not? This is flatrate. Use it as you please, just pay the fee and we [Yahoo] will sort the rest.
Re:The Quota Super-sizing Trend (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll let you judge, let's take one of those supersized shared hosts, which offers up to 750GB of disk space. In the ToS however, I find an interesting clause that says, paraphrasing: "750GB, but no more than 5GB archives, no more than 5GB of media files, no more than 5GB of data files or programs, no more than 5GB for SQL data dumps".
So, I went to chat with the support, and ask, what the hell I'm going to use then those 750GB for? Names and domains replaced, since, no need to single out either one of them (they're all the same anyway). Here's our conversation:
------------
Support Guy1: Hello
Support Guy1: Welcome to XXXXXXX Hosting Services!
ME: Hello, please clarify your ToS: "NO more than 5,000 MB of a Linux shared hosting account can be allocated to Executable files and all other files which are the result of compiling a program. These include but are not limited to
ME: PDF and PSD files are not compiled programs
Support Guy1: yes they are not but they are considered as applications
ME: why does XXXXXXX put limitations on the meaning of the bytes I use on my eventual account
Support Guy1: Could you please hold on a second so that I can transfer you to one of our experienced senior sales assistants for better assistance
ME: ok
This chat session has been transfered to Support Guy2 [sales]
Support Guy2: Hello
ME: hello, can you please explain the rationale behind XXXXXXX putting limitations on the meaning of the bytes I use on my eventual account
Support Guy2: Well of course - on our shared hosting accounts there are a lot of users and in order to maintain optimal performance we have to limit some of the file types stored on the server.
ME: can you explain how does it differ performance-wise to store 5MB of an mpeg and 5MB of an SQL file.
Support Guy2: Well the limits are far wider than 5 MB - they are actually 5 GB - so you can store 5 Gigs MPEGs total
Support Guy2: in regards to the SQL files - you can have as big file as you wish, as long as it does not load the server
ME: I realize, it's an example
ME: if I don't serve those files, would that section of the ToS apply to me
Support Guy2: Well if you do not use those kind of files, you should disregard this line in the TOS, since it does not apply for you
Support Guy2: May I just ask what do you plan to host?
ME: can I quote you on this, if I store 6GB of mpegs for example, and not serve them, and I find my account suspended
Support Guy2: Well I fear we have missed each other in the line... You cannot have more than 5 GB total multimedia files on the shared hosting account. In case you have 6, you should find an alternative solution like a VPS or a dedicated server.
ME: but you offer 750GB of storage, can you please supply one example what do your customers use 750GB for, if not for media files, archives, executables, dumps and data files
Support Guy2: Well you can have combinations of files plus other file types that are not limited like txt files.
ME: I can have 750GB of txt files?
Support Guy2: We do not apply a direct limitation on the txt files, but still may I ask you what do you plan to host on our servers? Like what kind of website do you plan to have and how large would it be so that I can help you with the most optimal plan
ME: I don't see limitations on the kind of site I can host in the ToS
ME: except for pornography,
Parent
All you can eat? (Score:5, Funny)
Tis no man, tis a remorseless eating machine.
Unlimited is easy.... when you redefine unlimited. (Score:5, Informative)
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/smallbusiness/Lwebhosting/home/bb/*http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/unlimited/ [yahoo.com]
Re:Unlimited is easy.... when you redefine unlimit (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Yahoo is just the latest company to cash in on the "hidden a-la-carte" fee structure. Just like cell phone plans, "Free checking" and just about every other "flat rate service", you can no longer tell in advance what you are going to get charged for something, and every time you tear open a bill, you know there is a good chance that it is going to be 50% higher than the month before because of some obscure item buried deep in the fine print.
Parent
Unlimited? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yahoo's service has been going downhill for years, and now Microsoft is going to be running things. I can imagine some arbitrary restrictions, or "random" failures, that makes this service not so great. Unlimited bandwidth is nice, but if your pages take 20 seconds to render because the download speed is 128K/s, or if it takes 1 week to upload 100 Gigs, it stops looking so good.
Don't get me wrong, I haven't tried this service, and it sounds great. I just wouldn't give my hopes up.
Re: (Score:2)
I seriously doubt that microsoft is going to continue that.
One size fits all (Score:5, Insightful)
Annoying.
Re:One size fits all (Score:5, Informative)
Well, maybe you shouldn't go with a "traditional" hosting plan. Find a web hosting company like us [arrowbay.net] (or, frankly, many others) who let you add bandwidth to your hosting account on a monthly basis. So in theory, you could have an account with 5gb of disk space and 10 terabytes of bandwidth...
Parent
Re:One size fits all (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Lets see how long it lasts (Score:2)
I just sent a recommendation to a very large site (daily peak bandwidth > 3Gb/s). I suggested that they drop in a
Time to throw away the tape drives? (Score:2)
It's a gimmick (Score:5, Informative)
Most small business sites will never use even 100gb of data. We offer [arrowbay.net] shared hosting at ~$15/month for 200GB disk, 2tb bandwidth, and of our customers who use it, most could downgrade to cheaper accounts ($8? $4.50?) without a problem**. Yahoo knows this about its own customers, too, so this is likely a gimmick to give the impression of a "deal" while knowing most people won't actually consume much. Also note this quote from Yahoo's unlimited email FAQ [yahoo.com]: "The purpose of unlimited storage isn't to provide an online storage warehouse. Usage that suggests this approach gets flagged by Yahoo! Business Email's anti-abuse controls." Or, elsewhere in the help system [yahoo.com]:
OK. What exactly is that speed of growth?
(**Yes, I realize that some Arrow Bay customers are reading this. Check your disk and bandwidth usage: if it's always significantly under what you're paying for, consider downgrading to the next package for your next billing cycle. Seriously.)
Re:It's a gimmick (Score:5, Interesting)
How about $8 for 500gb of disk and 5tb of bandwidth ? Or even 8tb of bandwidth or 700gb, if you get the right promocode ? Dream host..ing ? (this is what a professional calls "surreptitious advertising", just in case you wanted a contrast to your spamlink). There are some people competing in a lunar-cyclish page way, and HOSTs drinking GATORade are out there as well.
Say, why don't you automatically downgrade those people if they are below usage, and automatically upgrade them to the next-higher tier when they exceed their limits ? Now that would be service. I'm sure some companies offer it.
Certain dreamy hosts have changed their "interpretation" of their ToS in that way recently, as well. If anybody ever sells you any hosting service with > 20 gb of disk space, you can be all but certain that they really only mean "in theory", never "in practice".
Oh, do you know where I found that package ? Not near the limits. Not at all near the limits. You first go to the legal terms of service, then search another link way down on the page, then scroll way down (it's the second to last paragraph). That seems really open and honest. Really.
Parent
Chess egtb (Score:3, Interesting)
I try my best with my own modest server, but $12 a month? I'll bite, Yahoo will you host it?
Dreamhost (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlimited sounds great, until you start using a large amount of space and Yahoo has to find some reason to say that you're not complying with their terms of service.
Uh-oh, says Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't they just figure out a few months ago how to bump up Hotmail storage up from 2 MB? (And still no IMAP or POP for free?)
Why now? (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Isn't it funny that they did this right after the Microsoft takeover offer?
It's possible that this was already in the works and has nothing to do with MS. But it's just so self-evidently stupid that I wonder if senior executives were involved. What's the strategic angle? Do they now accept an MS takeover as inevitable, and want to discredit MS as much as possible post-takeover (because it will be MSHoo, not Yahoo, who gets sued over the "unlimited" claims)? Or are they hoping to attract so many unprofitable bandwidth leeches that their service becomes undesirable and MS loses interest? Or is there a more subtle angle to this?
-Graham
Haham way to shiv Microsoft. (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, your going to buy us? thats great, here's the keys. BTW, we have ten million people using unlimited bandwidth and storage. Good luck.
The next day every geek int he land is putting up and pulling off 10s of gigs of files.
Unlimited bandwidth is cheap for Yahoo to deliver (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that all that bandwidth doesn't cost Yahoo nearly as much as a traditional hosting provider would have to pay for it.
Unlimited == Undetermined (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of disclaimers. No hard numbers. Definitely nothing to do with unlimited.
!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like we just solved W3C's problem.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you think they're building all those shiny new datacenters for?
Re:Timing (Score:4, Funny)
What do you think they're building all those shiny new datacenters for?
Parent
Re:Small and medium businesses? (Score:5, Informative)
not even remotely.
And these are -explicitly- shared hosting accounts, and there are some restrictions - including how quickly you can grow your disk usage, and if you are using too much bandwidth you'll be flagged. Another is that they explicitly are saying that it's not to be used as a datawarehousing resource.
All things that a large business is going to want to do.
Parent
Re:Small and medium businesses? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh. "Unlimited bandwidth", but if you use "too much" you'll be "flagged". IOW, Yahoo! has just joined the long-tradition of "unlimited" hosting services where "unlimited" means "we won't tell you up front what the limits are, but they sure exist, and you'll sure be nailed for breaking them."
Better off getting an account where the limits are disclosed, and you can pay to get them raised.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I was already looking into an online backup service (such as mozy.com) that would keep an off site backup of my files. Mozy has 'unlimited' storage too but only allows one person at a time to access the data. This would be great for mirroring files (such as class documents for students to access).
Does anyone know a good way to use this service as an automatic backup? I'm thinking rsync if they support ssh or sftp. Is there OS X / unix backup software like Mozy's out there that will do this with any web host, or should I use a cron job?
Frankly - no. The terms flat out say that you cannot use it for storage of data. Its for running a public web sites and storage of data needed for the site only, you cannot use it to do backups, etc. Also, the terms also say that since these are shared servers, your load is only unlimited as long as it is not interfering with other services - i.e. it is FAR from unlimited - more like un-metered but at a their whim. Its a great deal for a small site to not worry about bandwidth overages but its not unlimite