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Comment by kinkrtyavimoodh | Hacker News Reader

When your life is screwed up due to your primary google account of over a decade (that has god knows what all data, memories, contacts, brand association etc.) being shut down with little to no recourse, it does not matter that it was not nefarious or convoluted.

It especially does not matter that it wasn't nefarious when Google isn't going to listen to you anyway unless you happen to write a blog post that happens to get viral in the right circles.

It's not like there's a simple form that you can fill and which is reviewed and resolved in a few days reliably if your account gets deactivated by mistake. At that point you might as well be banging your head on a wall for all the good that will do.

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> It's not like there's a simple form that you can fill and which is reviewed and resolved in a few days reliably if your account gets deactivated by mistake.

Even a few days is unacceptable. There are times in my life where, if my Google Calendar, Google Docs, and email had all been shut off simultaneously, even for only a few days, I would have been completely fucked. Think travel, etc.

I switched to a different email provider for this reason.

(Remember that this also includes your phone, if you're on an Android device).

> Even a few days is unacceptable. There are times in my life where, if my Google Calendar, Google Docs, and email had all been shut off simultaneously, even for only a few days, I would have been completely fucked. Think travel, etc.

If you want that level of service, maybe you shouldn't use a free product.

You can have a free product, or you can have good, responsive, human customer service. You can't have both.

If you chose a free product, be ready to handle the consequences of your decision like everybody else.

> If you want that level of service, maybe you shouldn't use a free product.

...did you not read the part where I said I switched to a different provider?

And I was a paying customer - I had a Google Apps account, which comes with an annual fee for providing those services.

Of course, the problem isn't about me personally - it's that so many other, less technically savvy people aren't aware of how vulnerable they are to this problem. They don't think about it until it happens to them.

> You can have a free product, or you can have good, responsive, human customer service. You can't have both

This dichotomy is both reductive and inapplicable. The problem, as explained in this thread, is that Google has a reputation for bad service, even for their paid offerings. It exists, which is more than can be said of the support for the free products, but it's still not good enough. And again, most customers aren't aware of the extent of this and its implications until it's too late.

> They don't think about it until it happens to them.

Agreed, and doesn't need to be less tech-savvy people, just look at HN. People seem to expect good and free service.

> This dichotomy is both reductive and inapplicable.

And is still unavoidable. You can't have both.

> And again, most customers aren't aware of the extent of this and its implications until it's too late.

It is the same behavior with airline tickets. Consumers almost always buy the cheapest ticket, and later complain about the quality of the service.

Although I agree with the sentiment of your post, I do not consider the use of google products even close to free. It comes with a heavy price to pay in privacy, and they do make a significant amount of money from each customer they can keep in the herd. Google is probably a main reason why people think they can expect quality and free. But google will never provide service unless they hemorrhage customers over it -- despite the fact that their income could more than support some basic customer service -- at least to actually review suspended accounts and give people a reasonable chance to explain themselves.

I am sure the first objection will be "you don't actually pay". Does a farmer not owe his (cash) cow at least basic veterinary (customer) services? I honestly feel like that objection is as naive as claiming that exploitative international trade doesn't actually kill anybody, when there are entire populations held in poverty and without basic safety rights over decades or even centuries due to unjust practices. So I guess the counterpoint to "it's free, don't expect anything" is "if you can't provide a complete product including understanding the problems that derive from it and treating people with respect, you shouldn't offer it at all". Money does not define social responsibility, engaging publicly with other people does.

> I do not consider the use of google products even close to free

It is still "free". You don't pay anything to use it.

> they do make a significant amount of money from each customer they can keep in the herd

No, they make a small amount of money from each customer. By far not enough to provide human 24/7 customer support.

> despite the fact that their income could more than support some basic customer service

If that's a fact I'm sure you'll be able to provide enough support to such a claim.

But let's do some basic math. Let's say that Gmail has 1B users, and each user will use customer support once every 2 years, and that each support ticket costs $10 to provide (I've heard similar numbers). Probably far more when you think about all the languages and products.

That's $5B in support per year. Which is 20% of their 2016 profit.

There you go, you can't have a free service and good customer support. Proven.

But hey, you're welcome to vote with your wallet and clicks, and move to another provider that gives free products with free, good, 24/7 human customer support.

Let me guess: you won't. Because there are none. Because it doesn't make any financial sense.

> You can't have both.

It is entirely irrelevant to this thread and discussion. We are talking about the service for one paid product (Google Apps), on a thread announcing the service for another paid product (Google Chrome Enterprise).

> We are talking about the service for one paid product (Google Apps), on a thread announcing the service for another paid product (Google Chrome Enterprise).

No, OP is talking about this case, which is a free product:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15065742

I'm reading this thinking the same thing.

I've never put myself in a position where a freeware product had that much impact on my life. Heck I even pay to backup the paid services to a third party so I have a failover there.

You shouldn't blame Google, you should blame yourself.

I don't mind paying Google say ₹50 a month for the ability to reach a customer service agent when things go wrong. And one who's actually empowered to fix things, not a mindless drone.

Just because it's a consumer (rather than business) account doesn't mean we shouldn't have customer service, if we're willing to pay for it. There's no reason Google can't cater to us while also providing no-service free products.

> I don't mind paying Google say ₹50 a month for the ability to reach a customer service agent when things go wrong. And one who's actually empowered to fix things, not a mindless drone.

I'd bet that type of customer service costs far more than that.

> Just because it's a consumer (rather than business) account doesn't mean we shouldn't have customer service, if we're willing to pay for it. There's no reason Google can't cater to us while also providing no-service free products.

And I'd bet there are too few consumers willing to pay for it to justify Google offering. It is the old argumentum ad capitalismum, if it would make money, I'm sure Google would offer it.

Then increase the fee. BTW, it's like insurance — I expect to pay the fee whether or not I actually use customer service. It's not that I'll pay the fee only when I actually talk to customer service. If it's the latter model, the fee could be higher, like, "Pay ₹1000 and get service for the next month."

Even if few people are paying for it, it's worth it to address the negative perception about Google.

You seem to be assuming that Google (or any other company) does everything right, so if they're not doing it, it's a bad idea. That's not true. Companies make mistakes all the time.

> Then increase the fee.

Then nobody will use it, and you've set up a massive support infra in 100's of languages for ~0 paying users.

> You seem to be assuming that Google (or any other company) does everything right, so if they're not doing it, it's a bad idea. That's not true. Companies make mistakes all the time.

I'm assuming that people making those decisions are as smart as me, and if I can think about it, I'm sure they thought about it.

I never base my arguments solely on "other people are making mistakes".

That's before we get into the issue of trying to serve both a mass market and a niche at the same time. It doesn't work. Google should not try to serve the several thousands or few million users who want a fully-featured, paid product for personal use.

You don't need "massive support infra in 100's of languages". Start with English and see if it works. Then expand slowly, making sure the service remains profitable each step.

An add-on of the kind I'm suggesting is exactly the way to serve both a mass market and a niche at the same time. Everyone uses Gmail, but the few who want support for personal use pay. That's much less effort than building another product with paid support.

It's also no different from freemium mobile apps where 2-5% of users pay.

Google decision-makers are smart, but not infallible.

If you need 24/7 support get a mail account at a provider who has a tech office near your home/office. In my uni most people do not care if they lose their gmail

> get a mail account at a provider who has a tech office near your home/office.

In other words, a second-tier email service rather than the best in breed.

> In my uni most people do not care if they lose their gmail

No one's forcing them to pay for support.

(Remember that this also includes your phone, if you're on an Android device).

Is that inherent in using Android, or only if you use Google's own apps and online storage for your calendar etc?

It's not inherent in AOSP, but it's true for most Android users.

To helpful please name your provider

To alleviate the email issue: forward every incoming email to your outlook/apple account. Make copy of old email using IMAP to outlook/apple. Not ultimate solution but can be helpful. Oh BTW enable 2FA.

You're free to export and make backup of your data at any time with google takeout.

See the sibling comment for why this "solution" is a joke. Also keep in mind that takeout is completely buried so fewer than 1% of the users know about it, let alone use it enough to not get screwed by a lockout of their most recent data.

Compared to "takeout" permanently forwarding mails is better. That way you always have 3 copies. One in gmail, outlook, and apple. Well hope you don't screwup so much that all of them block you at the same time.

Well also less than 0.001% of the users accidentally lose their account and don't get it back so.

That’s still a manual, non automatable backup. To have any reasonable backup strategy you’ll need to find something service by service, giving up some that just have no API nor compatible query language (I think keep is part of that, you’ll have no way to auto backup)

Then I'd need some other software where I could start a server and import my data. Otherwise it's useless.

If this software exists and it is an adequate substitute to Google products.. well, let's just use it then.

It's relatively time consuming to do this. And how often should I do it? It's not as simple as the name suggests.

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