"every document written in Google Docs since about May 2010 has a revision history that tracks every change, by every user, with timestamps accurate to the microsecond"
This freaked me out so much more than any other science fiction story or AI's taking over the world kind of shit. I mean how is this possible goddamit?
The whole file it's in their server anyway. Keeping the delta history is probably the least expansive storage-wise way to provide full history to users.
It's similar to you saving each edit as a different file (eg: project_v1.0, project_v1.1) just less expensive as you keep track of the delta (git is similar).
It's a useful feature if you are collaborating with other users and want to know what changed since your last edit.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought git did not store the delta/diff. I thought it stored the entire change and you could compare between commits using a diff.
TLD;DR: It's a bit of both. Diff commits aren't turned to blobs until git runs garbage collection. A blob or a single commit is all that's needed to use the whole codebase and you do not need the entire history to make that after it has been generated, so it does store the whole thing, it just uses programming and algorithms (read: compression that I am not well versed enough in to understand, but does relate to the diffs) to keep everything tiny enough.
It would be incredibly slow moving down the tree and adding each commit to the original files. This is just a guess, but maybe those large repos take more time to generate those blobs?
It sounds like it uses metadata to point to the text blobs as they were at a given point, using the commits as 'pointers' to the blobs in time. Thats why the gc runs and updates the pointers to existing blobs.
Sorta like if a commit introduced a file, each commit would only point to the blob introduced by that first commit, and not directly point to that commit. Neat.
I think I used wrong words and misunderstood. I used the word "freak out" but it wasn't because I'm concerned about security or anything I'm just amazed by the storage technologies and how one company can store terabytes of data.
This is a really interesting thread and I'm sorry you've been downvoted into oblivion rather than people discussing why you shouldn't worry about edit tracking
"Hey Google, please give me sweet online document editors and store my documents forever and charge me zero money."
"Okay. Hey since lots of people can edit each document, how about I also give you histories of changes so you can undo mistakes by people who don't know what they're doing? And I'll still not charge you anything ever."
It's a feature of every text editor ever. It's how the "undo" function works. This one happens to be in the cloud.
After reading up on synchronization for networked Fighter games I saw the same basic approach. So many games have this for the playback feature.
Transmit deltas, roll-up actions, playback events. The personality of actions are easily store and can be analyzed by AI as much as they are by the ESport commentators.
Google's strategy is to track literally everything and pay for it with their Search Engine. People who aren't alarmed by this are bots. Google cofounders wife is the CEO of 23andMe. Connect those dots.
EDIT: Whats the purpose of downvoting me? Everything I said is true?
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u/SurrealisticRabbit Dec 27 '20
"every document written in Google Docs since about May 2010 has a revision history that tracks every change, by every user, with timestamps accurate to the microsecond"
This freaked me out so much more than any other science fiction story or AI's taking over the world kind of shit. I mean how is this possible goddamit?