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So I've heard, that it's difficult to get a human involved if you have a problem with Google's free products. The article says "Eventually, with the help of Google’s customer support and some ex-colleagues who still work at Google, Bob was able to get his account back." For the average person who doesn't have ex-colleagues who still work at Google, or who's name isn't Linus Torvalds, it will be far more difficult.

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I keep hearing this, but here's my anecdote.

I signed up for AdWords a long time ago and created a test campaign just to see what it looks like, but never completed the process, so I didn't have a payment method entered.

Fast forward till start of this year, I created an AdMob account to put ads in one iOS game I have, and apparently as soon as I entered my credit card info, the old AdWords campaign started running and was taking $200/day. I noticed after two days and immediately stopped it and contacted support. They quickly got back to me, a person called me and explained that the issue was an error from their side, and they refunded me the amount. It took three weeks for the refund to occur, and during that time the guy called me at least once per week to keep me in the loop. I was surprised with this after all I've heard about Google's support. But I guess that's just one data point in the pool.

AdWords is "different" because if your account has an issue, they aren't getting lots of your money. So their support is actually pretty good with AdWords. The rest of their services, the support is pretty bad (such as Google Apps), and their free services may as well have zero support.

My anecdote: I was brought in to help with an AdWords campaign for an ecommerce site. I did some keyword research, ran some small campaigns to get some CTR and conversion metrics, then kicked off a bigger campain, pruning keywords as needed to ensure CTR stayed up and we didn't get a low CTR slap on the account which results in CPC skyrocketing. It was chugging along at a pretty good ROI. At that point I turned it over to the person who is named as the contact on the account with instructions on how to keep it running. A couple days later they got a call from someone at Adwords offering to "help", and they recommended turning on display ads. A few days of that and the CTR had plummeted, CPC prices had skyrocketed, and ROI tanked and the account was ruined - couldn't get a decent CPC due to the CTR hole that had been dug.

Thanks Adwords support.

CTR = click-through rate, CPC = cost per click

Adwords is the only Google product to have dedicated support staff… and they're working on commission. Of course they're going to haunt you until the end of the world.

Yea, I've had a google voice number that I have used sporadically for my business for a few years and suddenly my account was just banned without any obvious reason. It was obvious to me that it was some bot gone wild on their end and was clearly a mistake. I tried contacting Google about it for months with no response. It was a number I actually needed for something important but was never able to recover it. I would have happily paid a monthly fee for the service if it meant I could at least get a response from a support email (ironically there's no number for google voice support). I even tried pleading with my adwords manager where I was spending a ton of money every month and she said she didn't known how to help.

Ug, that pretty much terrifies me. I have a google voice number that I've used (for free) since it was Grand Central, and rely on it pretty heavily.

Anybvody else seeing GV random revokes? I wonder what would happen if I tried a port-out for this number.

This right here is the quicksand you stand on with Google's free products. Starts out pretty innocuous. Hey, check out this cool new free phone product called Google Voice. You check it out, it's cool, don't really know how it might be useful but you play around with it and maybe use it for a side project or as a toy. Eventually, maybe years later, you find it may be very useful to your business. Great! You roll it out, slowly more and more things depend on it as you incorporate it more deeply into your services. Then suddenly, like a turkey on Thanksgiving Day, you're permanently cut off from your account without warning and without recourse. Now you're in a state worse off than had you never signed up for the service to begin with.

Google Voice numbers can be ported to Project-Fi. Porting to another carrier would almost certainly be more successful from that service.

This is why I won't rely on Google Voice for anything important - if they won't make it a paid service with some additional features, that means it's a cost center that could go away at any time.

Heck, I'd happily pay for Google Voice with the addition of fax capabilities (even if it was receive-only), particularly since my online faxing service was bought out by eFax (feh) and at the next renewal will jack up from $15/year to $85/year (bye!). I'd happily pay multiples of how much I was previously paying to be an actual /customer/ who gets that kind of services.

> if they won't make it a paid service with some additional features, that means it's a cost center that could go away at any time

Project Fi is a paid version of Google Voice with additional features. I doubt Voice will go away before Fi does.

> So I've heard, that it's difficult to get a human involved if you have a problem with Google's free products.

Nobody claims it's difficult; it's impossible via official channels. You have to make a scene on Twitter, so obviously if you value your time and reputation you just switch providers instead of being "one of those people".

This is my #1 biggest gripe with Google as a company. if you have a serious problem that needs immediate attention... oh well! Too bad. You have to personally know someone that works at google, or post a really long article on HN to get whatever it is fixed.

You're a product, not the customer. How well do we treat most livestock?

I recently realized Windows 10 is going the same way and unfortunately it's much harder to not use your OS than Google or FB, and impacts your ability to use other purchased software.

> it's much harder to not use your OS than Google or FB

I think the exact opposite. Using Linux instead of windows 10 is easy. But not using any google service can be pretty difficult. Good news, there are some initiative to "ungoogle" the internet, such as Framasoft.

What particular google services do you rely on that can't be replaced? I'm using fastmail for mail & calendar services, duckduckgo for search, firefox instead of chrome, sync rather than google drive.

I've had terrible experiences with duckduckgo. I really want to switch, but I've never been able to justify the costs. Every now and then I give it a shot but the results from DuckDuckGo just aren't there. Sometimes they aren't even in the ballpark of what I'm looking for, while Google nails it - what I want specifically is in the top 3, and the whole rest of the first page is related.

I don't know if this is because Google and DuckDuckGo require different phrasing of terms to do well and I'm just highly adapted to Google, or if it's something I can't help.

I'd suggest trying Qwant as well. Just remember, the way Google can give such good results is that they mine your life.

Just use !g, it's not perfect but it's fast.

Doesn't that just redirect you to Google's search results (encrypted.google.com), and thus makes the point of using DuckDuckGo in the first place unnecessary?

Try startpage.com, it searches Google anonymously so Google can't build a profile about you and place you in a search bubble.

I have a domain and a paid-for email hosting service that I use for my personal email. When I tell people this I often get looks of incredulity: Pay money?! Why not just use google? I must be mad!

My response is that I do not want an advertising company to handle my most personal correspondence. In my mind it really is that simple.

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