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Comment by jsty | Hacker News Reader

> the Kafkaesque experience makes me think question our reliance on other Google services, like Cloud and Workspace

This last paragraph should really give pause for thought to anyone at Google whose OKRs involve revenue from non-Enterprise business customers.

Anecdotally speaking - I've considered running Google ads for my company more than a few times, and every single time the thought of a spurious "account violation" for those ads spreading and knocking out our Workspace and Cloud accounts has stopped me doing so - and I've spoken to a fair few other business owners who have reasoned likewise.

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I believe something similar happened with IBM. In the 90s, IBM was a household brand name that ranked up there with Coca Cola. Even in 2007 it was 5th on the Global 500 [1].

However, IBM pulled out of the consumer market. Watson on Jeopardy (c 2011) was their last public stunt. Their TV commercials became more and more abstract and eventually they were out of mind for the average person. So as one day, people no longer thought of IBM when they thought about who can solve big technology problems.

Of course, IBM suffers from many other problems, but I think you're on to something about the importance of doing consumer well to support your enterprise business when you're a large tech company.

1. https://brandirectory.com/rankings/global/2007/table

This is absolutely on the mark. When I worked at IBM, we would do community outreach in area schools. None of the kids we were mentoring had even a clue about IBM. Only the older teachers even remembered IBM. This was a bracing experience. The brand had been destroyed by not having any customer facing products.

Your comment on IBM ads reminds me exactly of GE circa 2006, advertising on Meet the Press with incredibly generic commercials saying nothing.

I'm concerned that we might hire someone who worked for a company that got blocked by Google. Would they block us if that person signed in from the same IP they used previously? Should we expect prospective hires to a) know about these blocks and b) disclose them to us?

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