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Comment by anupj | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm being naive here, but why are you quitting Gmail, when the problem is clearly with Adsense. I understand that you are furious at Google, and from what you've said you have every right to be; But why stop at Gmail, why not quit Google Search as well :).

I hope Google gets back to you with a more reasonable explaination.

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Hosting your email on a server you don't control requires a high degree of trust. What if you were locked out of your Gmail account and couldn't get any support from Google to fix it?

The author had previously been able to dismiss such concerns due to his overall positive experience with Google. After experiencing this first hand proof that Google's support cannot be relied on, he no longer felt secure hosting his critical data with Google.

Google search is different because there is no lock in.

I'd say because Google is clearly not interested in customer service. If they were, you'd not see all the stories of people unable to contact them to resolve issues with so many of their services.

So, why trust them with something as important as your email when they fail at other things?

Personally, I use a gmail account for non-important communication, and my primary remains a Yahoo account. I've never had a problem contacting a live person with any Yahoo service, or getting back a response that actually shows they read what I wrote.

Customer service is an area where Google could learn from yahoo, but I doubt they care to implement such an infrastructure.

I'd say Google is more interested in customer service where you pay them (AdWords) than where they pay you (AdSense) or where they give you stuff for free (Gmail, everything else).

Not really, in my experience. I sell educational software, but sometimes my ad gets flagged as a "term page writing service" or something or other (not real clear). Getting it cleared past the flag has taken over a week on occasion, and there is nothing that can help.

And the term-pages sales guys get their ads through anyway!

If they're doing Gmail right, they are still making money off of you.

The only trouble with that is that if they piss off too many of the people who they pay or who use their free services, then they won't have anyone willing to pay them; isn't that a variation of what's happening to the newspapers?

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