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Comment by adzicg | Hacker News Reader

anecdotally, you can get good support if you're a customer, but there's a big difference between a customer and a user. I've heard (not confirmed personally, just overheard at conferences), that if you spend enough on adwords to register on their radar as a customer, things are easy to get sorted even if they're nowhere adwords related.

the big difference is that for the most part, google users/developers/... are not really customers.

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I can reassure you, as a Google Apps for Business customer, that they treat their paying customers with every bit the same contempt as they treat their free end users.

Google Apps for Business isn't adwords, though. my comment was about adwords customers.

You still implied that being a paid customer vs user made a difference. It kind of doesn't for some services... but that's good, that's an opportunity for the competition to piggy back on that : "We're not Google, here you'll benefit from a real customer service!".

The worst is that google doesn't even have good tools that allow its community of users to help each others, aside from a mediocre Q&A forum.

Is it a sarcasm ?

Sadly not. Getting support for anything that isn't Adwords from Google is hopeless.

I have had to call a couple times on different email related issues with Google Apps and have to say my experience has been nothing less than impressed. They were responsive, extremely helpful, and continued to follow-up to make sure the issue was resolved and we were not experiencing any more problems.

I've also had issues with Adsense and have access to their support, and have had the same experience there. Helpful, responsive, and followed up long after the problem was resolved to make sure we didn't have any more problems.

Overall, I went in thinking their support would suck and ended up impressed.

When was that? If they've improved I would be delighted.

Don't try to use groups in any advanced way.

Two within the last 12 months and a couple last year. I just had an Adsense issue last month that was fixed same day. For apps, I had to merge multiple business accounts several months ago and they assisted us with the entire process.

Well I'd say for their core products such as AdWords Google are treating their customers with care. It's just that they simply don't give a shit to the majority of their other products. Why would they anyways? They're an ad company and really just as the founders said themselves, the other projects are much experimental in nature after all. That's just the reality in a business sense.

If you generate over $25 a week with AdSense, you can chat with AdSense support at anytime.

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/2657175

With Google, you're not the customer. You're the product.

Hog farmers treat their products better.

Did we all just see transforming of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader?

From "Do no evil" to "???"

Feel the power of the dark side..... :-)

> With Google, you're not the customer. You're the product.

No, though with many free Google services, each user is a low-volume supplier in a crowded field of similar low-volume suppliers.

I'd agree. If you have a company that uses Google Apps, for example, getting support for Google Apps -- with an actual human being on a telephone (!!!) -- is easy to do. And the human beings you talk to are pretty damn knowledgeable. They'd be like the second or third level after the call script monkeys at any other support service.

Apparently app / extension developer is not a customer.

If you're not paying them money, you're not a customer.

You pay a few dollars to get your extension listed in the Chrome store or your app published in Play Market AFAIK. So by definition you are. Hell, even the customers who bought some apps in the store have a share of their money going to Google, so they are also Google's customers as well. It's just that they contribute way too little financially and are so many in number that Google choose to not give a damn. Ads has always been their only core, true business anyways.

The parent wrote "And we are paying customers." It looks like that anecdote is starting to lose some of its luster.

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