Of course, with a physical disk there are also things you can do to get around those limitations, like switch to a different filesystem or use multiple filesystems on one disk.

Using the cloud leaves you exposed to the whims of the cloud provider. They select and switch technologies based on their needs instead of yours, and can arbitrarily change the restrictions.

If you manage to hit five billion files (which seems to be the standard limit), you might be in the market for object storage rather than new frontiers in file systems.

> five billion files (which seems to be the standard limit),

Article says 5 million? Still a big number, but smaller than 5 billion.

We're talking about file systems.

Then where are we getting 5 billion? The most common filesystem limits listed seem to be 2^32, which is a touch over 4 billion, and 2^64, which is Big.

(i.e. I can see now what I think you meant, but "5 billion" is a much closer match to "5 million" than 2^32)

My brain doesn't do numbers so good, so 4,294,967,295 became 4,924,967,295 and I rounded up instead of down.

Ah, that makes sense. Completely understandable:)

> Of course, with a physical disk there are also things you can do to get around those limitations, like switch to a different filesystem or use multiple filesystems on one disk.

So, use another Google account? If someone's workflow depends on one Google account, sounds like they need to understand the concept of sharding.

Of course they have limits, but the limits should be based on the design. And cloud should have a phenomenally high level.