Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.
plus.google.com
plus.google.com
This kind of chicanery is why I can only chuckle when Google announces new initiatives that require significant customer service, like selling telephones or providing a fulfillment system to compete with Amazon Prime. They treat their users like ants. And given the way their business is structured, that scale is about correct.
Google doesn't need for any given user of their service to be pleased. They're a whale, straining krill from the ocean, playing a vast advertising numbers game on a scale individuals can barely grasp, and can barely factor into.
Which is not an illegitimate position. But it poses a problem for individuals who are swept into its gaping maw - there is zero incentive machinery to compel Google to ever get things corrected. Depending on where a product is on its growth curve, it might even cost Google more to fix the problem than to replace the users. Your only recourse is to hope for enough public embarrassment to short-circuit the system.
It also calls into question the viability of their entry into any business where service is a differentiating characteristic.
But that doesn't really matter to a little girl whose correspondence with loved ones has disappeared down a black hole. That despair is as reasonable as Google's indifference. And, it points to a great opportunity to make a reliable mail service that addresses the needs of the ever-growing population of young people who will need email long before it is regulatorily convenient to Google.
> They provide COPPA compliant email accounts for children under 13 from their Apps for Education domains.
The capability is obviously there, and apparently COPPA has a way for parents to provide consent.
Android...... Where does it say anywhere that Android devices can only be sold to those old enough not to be covered by COPPA?
Google's approach is heavy handed, but it's a really bad law.
If an account is created for a person under-age, suspend ad service to that account (end data collection) and require a nominal fee to activate it (which provides abundant evidence of parental consent). Cutting off the next generation from email does not seem like the answer. Would a Montessori-educated, eight-year-old Sergey Brin have appreciated such treatment?
Since that won't happen, I mean, when we have kids I guess we just have to pay for hosting and administer their email ourselves?
Google products are free, they make money on data collection/advertisements. People who they can't advertise to aren't profitable, and it's unlikely a nominal fee would make up for all the overhead. The user is their product not their customer.
OK I concede that one, and it made me laugh.
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus45-how-comply-childrens...
it will cost you very little and you will not have to deal with crap like that, alternatively you can have a chat to your friendly domain hosting company, I am sure they will have something that will fit your needs.
All you need is a domain name, but it's a good idea to have that anyways in case you ever want to leave. I use this solution with my kids and it works great because it also allows me to control access to certain services and reset passwords for them, etc.
Want your email free, just do it the internet way: host your own.
MapsGL. http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...
Everyone plays the balance game. You can have the best customer service in the world, but my daughter is still going to cry if your moving company breaks her stuff, or your store sells us tainted dog food, or your family-run email service writes the wrong data to the backup tapes just before a failure. Amazon might be awesome in terms of rates of well handled customers, but Google is doing pretty well, maw metaphors notwithstanding.
edit: it's really the rates of bad experiences/customer I'm talking about. There's another side of things, that of, bad experiences/customer with a problem, which Amazon is better at (in a market that isn't really comparable to the one in which google's services primarily reside, of course). On the other hand, Bezos's often cited goal of every call that has to be made to customer service being a bug to be fixed is exactly google's goal, it just sounds a lot better when there's still a number you could call.
Except we're not their customers.
One user fucked over out of 1,000, even if they never return, is pretty easy to paper over. Which is why there's no phone number a user can call if they're in trouble. They don't really matter, so it's not worth the cost to address their issue.
AdWords advertisers, on the other hand, they can get a human on the phone whenever they want. Because if they have an issue, it's honest-to-god cash money that stops flowing into Google's coffers.
They're the real customers.
If you want to contribute some signal instead of noise, you could say they have two sets of customers with sometimes opposed motivations. But that isn't uncommon (and if it isn't another set of customers, it's your suppliers or the hours in the day or something else). As I said, everyone plays the balance game.
To Google and Facebook, users are just parameters to be optimized.
With that in mind, I'm pretty sure Netflix would not email me asking to know about the quality of a given streamed movie if I were merely a user.
And the way I know that is that YouTube has never once checked in on me to see how my streaming experience went.
Your point about adwords customers getting someone on the phone is important, because not all adwords customers can. Preferential treatment for large customers is not at all unusual, and I don't think anyone would argue that it is bad. They just want a phone number they can call too.
Netflix and Youtube have completely different streaming models (namely youtube's is not adaptive), but I do see a "report a bug" link on there. But this ignores my point, which was not that google customer service is awesome, just that there definitely is a feedback loop ("there is zero incentive machinery"), and that "product not a customer" still misses the point as much as it ever has.
On a side note- even if I lose my staff, I lose some chunk or revenue, that does not make my staff my customer.
However, you write "to be optimized", so clearly you agree with my original comment. Catchphrase away, then.
It's such an attractive meme, isn't it? Short, straight to the point, and it seems to make sense. What could possibly be wrong?
Like most things, the explanation why it is wrong is subtle, and much longer than the seven words it takes to express.
But think about this: credit card machines are usually provided free to merchants. Merchants aren't the product, and the credit card companies certainly regard them as a customer...
Multi-sided markets[1] are much more common in real life than you'd think, and the subject of significant study[2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market
[2] http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=multi+sided+market...
[1] http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#325604...
I got the quote from [1]. You may well be correct about the original version - I was trying to make it as short and clear as possible. I'm not sure it matters too much, though.
[1] http://techland.time.com/2010/10/15/facebook-youre-not-the-c...
Of course they are! Have you ever actually seen a credit card commercial? What do they talk about? The color of their cards? How people feel when using them? No, the focus on what companies will accept them (e.g. "it's everywhere you want to be!").
This little rant you bring up every time someone points out the nature of for-free services is as off base as ever.
Look again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OolP9gNLP6c
Look how much business they are doing! How much quick to process it is compared to cash!
You are right of course - most mass market ads focus on the consumers, not the merchants. BUT the merchants are customers too, and it is the consumers that credit cards attractive to merchants. Classic multi-sided market.
This little rant you bring up every time someone points out the nature of for-free services is as off base as ever.
I'm glad it is being noticed.
Rather than blaming Google here, shouldn't we be writing our legislators to repeal COPPA? We should be telling them that this misguided law is starting to intrude onto the choices that parents make when raising their children, and that it should be repealed immediately. As long as COPPA exists, we'll see more and more stories like this.
"Hey Mr Food-N-Liquor owner, I give you consent for you to sell my 18 year old alcohol" etc
Please get your mom or dad! You need your parent or guardian's permission to continue. Show them this screen. Parents, Please Sign-In.
To complete your child's Yahoo! registration:
Sign in with your own Yahoo! ID or sign up for a new account by clicking on the "Create New Account" button below. Confirm your child's information on the next page. You will need a major credit card. To create a Yahoo! ID for your child, we require your consent to collect, use and disclose certain personal information about him or her. You can give this consent by signing in to Yahoo!, reviewing and editing the information your child provided, and then submitting the form on your child's behalf.
You will be charged 50 cents to help confirm that a parent or guardian more than 18 years old is involved. Yahoo! will donate a portion of that charge to charity.
Your child will be able to use most of Yahoo!'s unmoderated services, including Messenger, Mail, Groups and Message Boards. Learn how to make smart and safer choices online and get advice on using Yahoo! products safely.
If the internet had existed when I was a little tike, I'd have been 13 for about eight years.
For example, section 4301.69 of the Ohio Revised Code states "Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, no person shall sell beer or intoxicating liquor to an underage person...unless the underage person is supervised by a parent, ..." (Quote abbreviated for brevity, but the elided portion doesn't change the meaning)
No attack against you or your values (if you even share those represented by the laws), but - yeah - I wanted to rub in the fact that this is kind of anti-liberal. And - maybe the basis that supports laws like that is to blame for COPPA as well?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_age#Countries_and_subdiv...
There are 13 year old kids out there who can write a web and mail server, yet could get into trouble for using them.
Not a good position to be in, honestly....
For sites that choose to age-screen, age information should be asked in a way that does not invite falsification. See Question 39, below. In addition, we recommend that sites that choose to age-screen employ temporary or permanent cookies to prevent children from back-buttoning to change their age in order to circumvent the parental consent requirement or obtain access to the site
...
However, as described in Question 38, above, should you choose to block children under 13, it is important that you design your age collection input screens in a manner that does not encourage children to provide a false age in order to gain access to your site. If you take reasonable measures to screen for age, then you are not responsible if a child misstates his or her age. For example:
...
Not encouraging children to falsify their age information, for example, by stating that visitors under 13 cannot participate on your website or should ask their parents before participating. In addition, a site that does not ask for neutral date of birth information but rather simply includes a check box stating “I am over 12 years old” would not be considered a neutral age-screening mechanism.
Not all kids are created equal, and some kids will be 13 sooner than others. Some might argue that's not fair. But, back in the day, I would not have been among them.
This Service is provided to individuals who are at least 18
years old or minors who have parental permission to open
and maintain an account.
Also, since you are paying them a little money, they offer actual technical support, unlike Google.
They also have family accounts, where you can have one person take care of billing and administration of several accounts. That's what I use for my whole family, including my parents.
Take the next 5 minutes to install thunderbird (you'll be impressed if you have not seen it in years) and enter the IMAP settings for google and download everything in the background while you work.
When your account gets hacked and you lose everything, you'll appreciate the backup.
and be able to backup your imap mailboxes without a GUI
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/backup-gmail-in-linux-with-get...
If anybody else tries this, I'd recommend sticking with POP3 as getmail's IMAP client seems to mark all your messages as read (not cool).
In the interest of full disclosure, I do know the backupify team, but I pay for the product because I find it useful.
However, there are some great TB extensions that will allow you to export your mail into a reasonable, portable format every so often. I use ImportExportTools to export my mailbox to an mbox file and store that file securely. I can use this file to reimport to Thunderbird or any other mail client, or even to read some mail directly. :)
Of course, this was in Feb 2011. Maybe things have changed now.
And set her up with her own website already. Show her the power she has to not put up with such stupid limitations.
2. Google are completely within their rights to do this. It's their servers after all.
2. That's why I said "Set her up with her own website already". Notice I didn't blame Google.
On the plus side, this is #1 on Hacker News meaning Matt Cutts should reply any second and internally flag this up inside Google.
One of the comments on the Google+ entry also stuck out:
"The same happened to me. It also means my daughter can't log into her Chromebook!"
If that's true that's pretty awful. It does bring up a good point though - if Google close your account (rightly or wrongly), it does make owning a Chromebook somewhat useless.
Lets assume there's an automated process for detecting underage accounts. Why can't they just prevent the account from being used to send email? Or why can't they say "Sorry, we have to disable your account; but you can download all of your emails at (insert some secure link to a ZIP file)"?? Or, as the post says, migrate these accounts to their COPPA-compliant set of accounts?
You know what the real problem is? The real problem is that Google collects a shit-load of data about its users. And they don't want to put in filters which will not log the data of underage children, because that opens them up to scrutiny. So they would rather keep this blackbox closed, and in the process if a few kids get screwed, then, well, screw 'em!
Any data collection is forbidden by COPPA without parental verification. You seem to think that's just logging ad targeting data or something. No, it includes any information entered by the child into the service. So not only can they not send any email, they can't receive e-mail. They can't even have an email address! They can't thumbs up a video on youtube, let alone save one as a favorite video for later. You could only view google docs that are globally-viewable, since you can't share a private document with a child without storing some data about them. They certainly can't edit a document!
It goes on and on.
Actually I don't think there is a single you do once logged on (or registered) that is not collected to profile you. facebook even collects what you do when logged off.
Only to have it all deleted when Google get around to it?
TL;DR: The account in the commercial is the parent's, not the kid's.
"Dear Sophie" does have a much nicer ring to it, I guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age. It would be iron age. And no historian disputes that an actual letter was written to Corinthians (and most are certain on Paul), so that takes out the mythology. At best, you can call it "Iron Age history of uncertain veracity". Sorry that it doesn't have quite the same demeaning effect.
You can't send an email to someone who doesn't own an email account.
That's very true, as I don't have a daughter. It's about one man sending emails to his daughter.
And the way I know that is it's called "Dear Sophie" and then the dude makes clear Sophie is his daughter. And the script, as written, has the narrator talking and writing to her, and not himself (which would have been less touching, if apparently more legally accurate).
People rally against zealous lockdown of PC (recently restricted boot in EFI, earlier TrustedComputing in general). Not being able to install any software of choice (with reasonably little effort) sure is bad, but having an already functioning computer swept right from under your fingertips could easily be way more damaging. Government couldn't do that without serious due process. Why a company can, and why aren't there voices of stern protest?
That's nonsense - look at the hours of merchandise promotion across dozens of channels. Toys is billions of dollars per year.
Is a parent going to look at untargeted (because of COPPA) gmail.com advertisements while their kid bangs out the odd email? No.
The point of targeted advertising from Google is to show you a relevant ad during the few times that you use their app. With COPPA, all of this goes out the window.
But. This discussion should be about COPPA. See danah boyd's illuminating research and analysis on the subject here:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/11/01/parents...
Don't be careless and it won't come back and bite you.
https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/
a site that many HN users may like, especially if they have children, because of its many resources for learning mathematics. It's regrettable that Google doesn't follow this example.
How is Google's behavior in this reported instance consistent with Google's claimed support for data liberation?
http://www.dataliberation.org/
And how is the lack of notice and lack of help for parents who approve of their children having email accounts (not to mention Google's apparently contrary advertising campaigns) consistent with a policy of "Don't be evil"?
And then I dug this up: http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-...
Running your own shouldn't be that complicated, but it won't become easy until enough people start switching.
Hyperbolic nonsense. Their consideration for multicultural, international, legal, technical, practical, and end user issues under time and effort constraints doesn't come out exactly the way you wanted it to under one edge case that you happen to hit therefore they "haven't ever considered"?
Never assign to malice what can be adequately be explained by stupidity needs a corollorary - never assign to malice or stupidity what can adequately be explained by being outside the normal patterns of a huge system.
Can you expand a bit on how a sentient human being, wishing to communicate with other sentient human beings, is outside the normal patterns of a communications system?
Decisions are often (indeed, perhaps mostly) made without any consideration of individual people (even the people making the decisions aren't always entirely conscious of what they're doing). I don't believe that's a necessity, but a lot of people are pretty comfortable with it and it mostly approximates working. This sort of thing shouldn't come as a terrible surprise.
Gmail is. It's not positioned with anything like the complexity you describe. So it's not unreasonable, as OP suggested it was, for a user to want to use it, without giving much thought to age.
I'm afraid that this is, at least to the best of my ability to judge, simply wrong. Gmail is affected by the rules of operation at Google, and by the law. They certainly could address the issue with more compassion, but only at the cost of further increasing the complexity of their system. Everything is a trade-off.
> So it's not unreasonable, as OP suggested it was, for a user to want to use it, without giving much thought to age.
I didn't say it was "unreasonable." Just that the system isn't set up to allow it. It could be, but it currently isn't.
They just say Gmail is neat, and it's free, so use it.
But, of course you're right, the creation of the sausage that is Gmail is a very complicated sequence, beset by both internal and external bureaucracy, to say nothing of the technical challenges in maintaining it.
If they weren't, we would all be complaining about some other company running one of the world's most popular email services instead.
This is why. They just don't get it.
Blame your own government, not Google.
And it should set your attitude towards the government for the rest of your life.
Believe that's the current Dutch regulations, not an expert though. It's quite unfair to assume that companies will keep track of this. Kids under 13 should probably have parental/monitored internet usage anyway.
(Though I have to admit to having had a Fb account back when it was 18+ when I was 17. School wasn't on Fb and everyone did it...)
In most situations I've read, the people don't so much object the rules, they object to the unfairness of them. Two factors often come into play - were the rules clearly stated and is the penalty in proportion to the 'crime'.
'Rules clearly stated' doesn't mean 'here is a 10 page 8pt font terms and conditions document we assume you read' because you clicked through a EULA apge. If your rule is going to have an impact where they will likely lose their service, that had better be upfront and unmistakable. The dad claims he didn't see such a warning and in all the Google accounts I've signed up for, I don't recall reading such a condition either (I'm sure it's there, I just don't recall ever having seen it).
Punishment fitting the crime - it's a bit like those banks which charge you a $5 fee for falling below the $4 minimum amount you have to keep in your account, and then charging you an overdraft fee, then charging you for accessing an overdraft you hadn't previously arranged, then charging you for ... etc. Or perhaps laws where 'if you aren't doing anything criminal, you should have nothing to fear about constant unwarranted surveillance, searches or whatever'. Just because a rule is broken doesn't mean it's fair game for any penalty to be applied.
In the case of this kid, losing access to all that data seems to be unfair. I get the sense that if the dad could at least retrieve the data, most of his unhappiness would be gone and he would move on.
Arguing with a 'the rules have been broken, lynch them' position, really doesn't take into account basic human behaviours - people make mistakes, you have to help them not make them (clear rules) and guiding them to the correct behaviour when they deviate (appropriate in proportion punishments).
Of course, a business doesn't have to take into account basic human behaviour - that's their right - but they rightly deserve the scorn at their lack of respect for their customers when they get called out.
As they say, "Luck favors the prepared".
I know it's a leap to trust a small startup with such important data, but with stories of Google arbitrarily shutting down accounts, it helps make our case.
Sure, we've had some growing pains, but when a parent emails us with problems, they get in touch with a founder who will make the situation right. Good luck getting that with Google.
Is this kind of problem widespread with google products? That is, could it be explained by a small number of bad calls from somewhere inside Google's innards?
Of course, our kids can still find p0rn, violence and who-knows-what-else online with no filtering whatsoever. But at least they can't blog about it.
TANSTAAFL, you're paying for their services by acting as their product.