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Comment by XCSme | Hacker News Reader

I think the biggest problem is Google becoming a monopoly, when you rely daily on tens of their services. Than, if for some reason, they decide to close your account or use your data to "be evil", there's not much you can do.

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Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily? I agree this would be a huge problem, but I'd be similarly devastated if my ISP stopped doing business with me, or any other email provider if I wasn't on gmail.

True, if Google deactivated my account I'd lose a little bit more than just gmail, but any company I do business with arbitrarily cutting me off would be on the same magnitude of problematic. That seems like a risk you take just by doing business with third-parties at all.

I remember seeing a few cases of Google account de-activation every year. Not sure how often it happens, but it does happen. I personally use Gmail and really like it, I don't expect to have any problems with them, but I do know that my account being deleted at some point for no reason is a real possibility.

I think that email is a bigger problem as it's the main connection between you and all the other services you use online. Lose your email address? You're going to have a hard time recovering the accounts on all the other services.

The risk with Google is that (if you're like most of us), you're likely to be using several of their services. If you're flagged in any one of those services (for whatever reason), you run the risk of losing access to all of their services at once - including Gmail.

I totally agree with this point, it absolutely does happen. It's just every time I investigate a given incident further it is either: A) A clear ToS violation where Google is completely in the right with the suspension B) An engineering error that is fixed in a day or two.

Which puts Google in the same camp as every other tech company I do business with, and every other email provider for that matter. Moreover, given the hundreds of millions if not billions of gmail users and only handful of suspension stories, I'm probably less likely to face suspension on Gmail than other platforms.

> Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily?

Yes.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+%22google%2...

Can you be more specific? I see two links that are directly related to account suspension on the front page of DDG. One related to Newpipe, where the comments on HN call it out as a likely troll, and another with a dead link.

Here's a better search of this stuff:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Example:

https://support.google.com/adsense/thread/11487570?hl=en

"I uploaded a YouTube video, which was a normal video in my eyes.. that got removed for inappropriate content and got my account disabled. Now my access to the gmail address is blocked"

Being banned from Youtube because you violated their TOS is one thing. Losing access to Gmail at the same time, because everything is linked to the same Google account? That's excessive.

That's a fair criticism, and perhaps a good reason to not use Gmail. But that's not an arbitrary deactivation, and it doesn't support totally avoiding Google in all things.

> Is there a history of Google de-activating accounts arbitrarily?

Absolutely. And usually the only solution is to make it known virally so that someone that works at Google try to intervene for you.

I would be screwed if google deactivated my mail account. So many accounts linked.

There's never been a better time to get your own domain and take back control before it happens.

I bought a proton mail account ... but that probably presents the same problem. someday proton mail decides to shut down users. less likely I guess.

what's the least pain way to have your own domain fronting an email service provided by someone else?

All services have arbitrary usage agreements and can terminate your account at any time if some automated system is triggered, or even if a human makes the wrong call.

> what's the least pain way to have your own domain fronting an email service provided by someone else?

If you're asking about moving from Gmail to protonmail, your best bet is to set up forwarding from Gmail and go through your most important accounts to change the email.

There's the issue of them arbitrarily disabling accounts, but also what if someone takes over your account?

You've lost everything at that point.

Google recommends two factor authentication to reduce this risk. https://www.google.com/landing/2step/

(Proper security is helpful with or without Google....)

Your question is obviously irrelevant. Whether or not they have flagrantly abused the power is irrelevant.

What is relevant is whether or not they could, how easy it would be to do so, how damaging it could be, and what protections we would have once they have done so. This is the threat presented by internet monopolies and their fetish for violating our privacy.

Also consider that no company has managed to stay on top indefinitely. Once their growth slows, and they become desperate to appease shareholders, what won't they do to make that happen?

Long after fads have changed, supposed benevolent coding wunderkinds have moved on, the troves of data will still be there, ripe for the MBA's, the lawyers, the mitt romney's, god knows who, to leverage.

The argument "they've been nice about it so far, so why shouldn't we keep doing it?" is a fucking joke.

"What do all men with power want? More power."

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I feel like we have to re-learn the lessons of history every few decades. These things have never worked out well for us in the past and yet despite thousand of historical examples, in every generation or three, a not-small group of people arises swearing that this time is different.

Literally the only way to protect humanity from itself is to prevent the concentration of power and here we are, doing it again.

It doesn't matter! Don't give them the power to!

There's a Richard Feynman quote from the Challenger postmortem: absence of a particular kind of failure in the past doesn't guarantee absence of the same kind of failure in the future.

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