Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

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Cutts, Google still doesn't understand the problem here.

Let's say I decide I have to break up with my live-in girlfriend, for good and sufficient reason. Perhaps she banged my three best friends, perhaps she literally killed my dog with an axe. Doesn't matter - I have my reasons. I break up with her. I still have to give her back her stuff from my apartment. If I don't do so, I'm committing a separate offense of my own. I lose the moral high ground.

Maybe something has to be worked out - maybe a friend of hers has to come over and get it, maybe I put her shit in boxes out on the porch. Whatever. I still have to give her back her stuff. The courts agree, public opinion agrees, the police agree. Whatever she did, no matter how egregious the violation, my swiping her stuff is FUCKING FROWNED UPON and is not justified by whatever harm she did to me.

Google demonstrates no knowledge of this legal and social norm. That's what is pissing people off. Implement a system to let people download their data from closed accounts and you can delete accounts with no explanation all day long.

Stealing people's data - regardless of what they did to you - is something that most people consider to be evil. Nobody cares about whether the guy did anything wrong or not. He's seizing the moral high ground from you because you, also, have committed a wrong.

Physical objects can only be in one place at a time. Data on the other hand can be backed up while it is still being used by the service. And Google collects information about how to do this for their services in one place: the Data Liberation Front http://www.dataliberation.org/

"Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out."

This philosophy, or at least the "out" part, should apply doubly after someone's account is terminated in this manner. Google has determined that sinning against one service warrants terminating access to other services. That may be justifiable. But sinning against one service should not warrant loss of one's data in other services.

No. The ToS applies to all Google services.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/104600580124930283388/posts/QBFa... He has access to Dashboard #liar

4.3 As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Google’s sole discretion, without prior notice to you. You may stop using the Services at any time. You do not need to specifically inform Google when you stop using the Services.

4.4 You acknowledge and agree that if Google disables access to your account, you may be prevented from accessing the Services, your account details or any files or other content which is contained in your account.

I have no knowledge of what services he can or can't access, just that it is within Google's purview to remove access to all Google's services.

P.S. This is not Twitter and we don't use hashtags in our posts. Please act as though you have a semblance of decorum.

Doesn't matter what the TOS says. They are destroying their brand. Last week I had some trust, now I have less. Next week I may have none. I can say that I am already looking for alternatives.

It is not realistic to expect all users to continually make backups of all their Google services.

It is however realistic for Google to solve this by putting a violating account in a "read-only" mode, where you are able to export all you data and not do anything else.

Yes it is realistic to expect all users to continually make backups of their Google services. Maybe google just hasnt made it easy enough yet... but that is what the goal should be.

Allowed access to banned accounts in "Read-only" mode is ripe for abuse by spammers and phishers who could benefit from still being able to access information in the violating accounts. Its the wrong kind of solution to a problem that really comes down to personal responsibility.

I think most people know deep down the responsible thing to do is have backups of all their important data... the cloud is just making people lazy. And providing a "read-only" access to a banned account will only make people lazier and more apathetic about it. "oh.. no worries.. Googles got my back" But what happens when Google is hacked, or suffers a natural disaster, or other catastrophic failure? It only serves to make the problem worse. Losing your data, to even a wrongfully banned account, is nobody's fault but your own.

There so many more reasons to backup your data before something bad happens, not after.... thats what we should be promoting

Any improvements in exporting data from a Google Account that will make a daily backup actually doable are welcome. But Google should not place all responsibility in the hands of the users, since this inevitable will result in bad user experiences and therefore bad publicity.

Regarding spammers and phishers, these are users violating the law and they of course have no legitimate claims to their account data.

Skud observed (http://infotrope.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/plus06.png) that she "can’t use Google Takeout to export [her] profile and stream" after having been suspended herself: http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-goog...

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