The cloud is someone elses computer. Act accordingly.
It's a shame this person lost their work. More and more stories like this need to come to light and we need to convince others the cloud is a risk, not a solution.
It was a solution. Google Drive was great until they turned user/customer hostile. Arguably, no one could really have seen this coming, because this doesn't even seem to make business sense. Google are seemingly acting against the reputation of their own services.
It does make business sense. Drive is facing serious abuse problems. See for example this article [0] for the other side of this coin. Google is trying to come up with automated solutions for shutting down 'abusive' items. The OP is an example of the automated solutions not working that well.
You are conflating spam from 3rd parties with having a private file that Google thinks they need to block you from accessing.
It is 100% possible (and not even difficult) for Google to prevent me from receiving spam from other Google Drive users whilst also allowing me to access my own Google Drive files.
I suspect OP has not really lost access to their own files. Per the blog post about this system [0], "When it’s restricted, you may see a flag next to the filename, you won’t be able to share it, and your file will no longer be publicly accessible, even to people who have the link."
My guess is OP has multiple accounts, created this file on account A, and can no longer access the file while logged in as account B, so it seems to be "removed from Drive." But I could be wrong, in which case I agree with you, this doesn't make sense as an anti-spam measure.
> Arguably, no one could really have seen this coming
Maybe 15 years ago when all this was new....but it's been pretty obvious that this was the course of things over the last 6-7 years. It makes business sense when there is no competition.
> Would that be harmful to Google to have Google Sheets be used to distribute? Yes.
If it's a private file (not shared), the question doesn't even make sense.
Some degree of control might make sense for 100% publicly shared content on Google Drive, but how does it make any sense that they are cutting off access for the owner of the content?
Because part of being big & successful if you're Google involves operating a business. If your approach to everything is "why risk it?" then you eventually just choose to shut everything down.
One of the killer features of a QNAP NAS is the built in cloud backup utilities for Google and Microsoft - it always amazes me how often I have to fight with people to turn them on.
You'd think after the original Photobucket meltdown people would be more cognizant of stuff like this, but here we (still) are :(
Part of the response is for users to trust the cloud less, but I wish part of the response would be to increasingly hold cloud storage companies accountable such that in the future they can't get away with this kind of abuse without severe consequences for them.
It's a shame this person lost their work. More and more stories like this need to come to light and we need to convince others the cloud is a risk, not a solution.