I never got a response after Google assured me that they'd do a full retro | Hacker News Reader

I never got a response after Google assured me that they'd do a full retro

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89 pointssela9725 comments

Of the 3 major providers, I've found Google Cloud to be the most reliable, but when problems happen they are by far the worst to work with. Even getting support to admit that there might be a problem on their end is nearly impossible.

"We don't rate limit."

* show support direct/irrefutable/reproducible evidence *

"We don't rate limit."

* Implement aggressive backoffs anyway, guessing at timings and problem goes away.

Similar with a number of networking timing quirks; denial from support and blind workarounds to progress despite being told they are unneeded.

Had to find this to get the context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36272747

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

GCP automatically lowered our quota, caused an incident, and refused to upgrade - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36272747 - June 2023 (169 comments)

Why are people still using Google services? They take your money and disappear when you need any help. Only way to actually get support is to know someone who knows someone or get enough social media support to have an engineer see it.

I de-Googled a couple of years ago and haven't looked back.

Google cloud takes better care of their big customers. But they have a branding problem. Perhaps they should rename it alphabet cloud or something.

Perhaps they could be clear how big a customer needs to be to matter, so those not big enough can self select to providers with customer service.

(just finished moving a client's last GCP env from an acquisition to AWS)

I had a client who spent $1M+ per year on Google Ads, and Google would fly them to California each year to meet with their account manager.

I don't know what the equivalent GCP spend would be to get similar treatment. Presumably higher. So that's a data point, at least.

Not even their biggest customers get any good support.

You pay for it.

The problem with GCP is the same problem with Google overall — arrogance and lack of knowing how to deal with real people.

You have to respect your customer, the work they did and organizational constraints when you are coming in to a large company.

Maybe in other sectors, but not on Cloud. I've been an involuntary GCP customer on two accounts that were mid single digits millions a year and one that is among GCPs larger customers. In all cases, Google was a nightmare to work with. Support is better when you're spending absurd amounts, but it's still an awful partnership, distinctly worse than their competitors.

Agreed. I don't understand how so many people are ok with trusting their whole digital lives to a platform with little, if any, access to real customer service by real human beings directly employed by Google. Or with essentially being Google's merchandise to be whored out to advertisers instead of being seen as customers.

Because their products are really really good compared to the competition.

I’ve tried to switch away from chrome, from search, from gmail, from calendar, from drive and from docs… and none of the alternatives work as well as the google ones. Even old stuff that got killed off - RIP wave, RIP reader.

Game Helpin' Squad: A Pissed Off Tutorial For Google Wave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z4RKRLaSug

> I’ve tried to switch away from… search

FWIW, I’m absolutely in love with Kagi. I do realize the price makes it a non-starter for many, though.

It’s a shame that their UI and docs are by far the best of the three (at least for me) in my experience. However their support is non-existent. Given I use the UI and docs daily and rarely use their support that’s the trade off I’ve made.

Go and Gmail are the only Google products I trust. I assume everything else will get killed or will be terribly supported.

You're placing waaaay too much faith in Google, friend.

The best Google will do in terms of customer support is...

This reminds me of the book I have on my shelf titled "Everything I Understand About Women". It's a hard cover book >1" thick with lots of blank pages. Probably one of the best gag gifts I've received

I assume you meant "on my shelf", but what you wrote is pretty amusing.

haha, yeah, gotta love typos that can change the meaning

heh that’s a great idea as a gift. you can change the subject about anything. just in time for the holiday season.

it’s still usable as a notebook or sketchpad if nothing else.

well, it is properly a hard cover book, so the cover is stamped with the title/author/publisher in gold foil like an older book. it looks exactly like a real published hard cover book sitting on the shelf. the only indication it's not real is when you thumb through the pages. it does look authentically older, say 70s/80s time frame. my guess is that it's out of print. <ducks>

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