Comment by wcarss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wcarss | Hacker News Reader

The response to this situation is the thing I take most offense with.

Google has too long operated on this notion - one we were exposed to in Fight Club, and horrified by - that reaction is an equation of cost. If they're nobody, fuck them. If they trumpet their displeasure on a blog, and no one cares? Fuck them. Oh -- people noticed? It hit an aggregator? Fix the problem promptly. They are now defused.

It's economical, reasonable even, but golly, it sure is /evil/.

It used to surprise us! It used to be that that would be the intriguing twist - "Google contacted them shortly afterward and fixed it! How quaint! We love google!" - but no more. Now it becomes clear that this is simply their practice. If you're being too loud about the shitty time you've had at Google they silence you. You either report that "there's nothing wrong now", or you're hiding information and being a bad netizen.

In this particular case, the user brought up an issue with their lack of communication or a face to deal with. Google responded by fixing an account without establishing any communication or providing an explanation. Notice the incongruity between response and complaint, and see how ineffective it is this time.

What happens when the failures are too common for people to take notice? When Google making a big mistake is just regular, shitty life, and no one cares enough to post it on an aggregator? No one's problems will be fixed, then.

Google's tipping point in public favour has arrived - they are evil. Blogs have questioned when it would hit for a long time, and I think it's safe to suppose the inevitable backlash has begun. I'm planning to move to a private mail server where there's some shred of accountability as soon as I can. And I swear, I used to absolutely love Google.

Well put. Observe that Google is treating customer complaints not as a customer support issue, but as a PR issue. When the PR goal is met (people are happy or unhappy in silence) the problem is solved.

How do you know? What if, according to Google, the problem was the customer? How do you tell a publisher that their website is not appealing to advertisers such that the publisher will satisfied? Isn't that implicit in the account cancellation? So why say it again explicitly?

I don't understand what Google could do differently to handle these incidents other than staff handlers to parrot empty reassurances to angry customers.

They could send an automatically generated mail saying:

We had to suspend your account because you violated rule X (link to description). To have your account reinstated please do Y or Z so you are not in violation of X.

Simple, isn't it?

That is simple, but Google explicitly states that they will not do that. Instead, Google linked to:

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=...

Which states:

"Why was my account disabled? Can you tell me more about the invalid click activity you detected?

Because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection system, we're unable to provide our publishers with any information about their account activity, including any web pages, users, or third-party services that may have been involved. "

So, you may submit more information to Google, but Google will not submit any more information to you. Thus, there is no need to entertain a discussion regarding your account ---at the expense of both parties--- as Google will not submit any further information to you.

That's reasonable to me.

It's not evil to fix a machine when its users publish that the machine not working as expected.

It's not evil to refuse a human conversation regarding that machine.

You want reasons? What, some phone operator is going to be able to know the specifics of your exact circumstance and the entire Google system at a moment's notice and produce for you an actionable response? For all people in the world? For free?

You would prefer hold music and a canned response?

I'd prefer if Google fixed the problem as fast as possible. I prefer if that process didn't require my input, and Google probably doesn't need your input to fix their machines anyways.

"your input" => "general customer complaint", I mean.

I agree with your overarching point here, that a broken machine or account shouldn't need to have the customer call or email a support line to get it fixed, and that customer support tends to suck -- especially any sort of support we would expect for 'free'.

However, we are not straddling a line between "customer has to file a complaint to get things fixed" and "things are fixed automatically", where the superior option is automatic fixes and no customer involvement. We are between "customer has the ability to file a complaint, because things don't get fixed on their own" and "customer is forced to call a great deal of public attention to themselves in order to get Google to notice or care, and hopefully fix things", where the superior option (in my mind) is the ability to file a formal complaint which actually gets a response.

Particularly in a case like this, where there is no machine failure or error, but instead a calculated judgement to terminate a user's account with no clear reasoning provided, just some vague "risk" they present to advertisers, I feel that some accountability needs to be had.

Most egregiously, this case raises a serious question of Conflict of Interest. By pulling advertising to an open source project which 'competes' with some of Google's (and their affiliates'/advertisers') products, and being absolutely opaque about their reasoning, Google risks coming off as anticompetitive and ruthless - running some of the little guys out of town by cutting off a funding source. If that was at all part of their motive or reasoning, it absolutely was 'evil'.

If they would just provide clear reasoning, a reasonable degree of transparency, and some form of complaint system where you at least have a chance of hearing back, a lot of negative sentiment wouldn't be coming their way. It's clear that the PR/damage control response isn't carrying the same sway it used to, and also that it was never a special interaction, just visible end users being quieted down to save face.

Apparently, Google has decided that its formal complaint system is "the Internet". We should all abide by Google's wishes and, as long as no internal complaint system appears, use the Internet as our complaint system, calling public attention to such problems so that Google will notice and do something about it.

If that happens enough, and each such complaint contains some reference to the fact that it only appeared on the Internet where Google can see it because Google doesn't provide a more satisfactory, direct line of communication, I suspect Google will eventually rectify that little oversight.

> Apparently, Google has decided that its formal complaint system is "the Internet."

Apparently that works if you're Google.

How do you know that the problem was fixed when you don't know what the problem actually was? Maybe they just fixed the symptoms of the problem regarding this indivudual account.

And this is not about human conversation. Someone or some system made the decision to terminate the account. That same decision maker, human or not, knew why the decision was made. To tell the account owner should be a completely automatic procedure, not requiring any human intervention beyond what may have taken place already.

It's not about efficiency. It's not about customer service. This is about secrecy and legal issues. They have decided NOT to tell people why their account is terminated because they don't want to make their rules public. All the talk about the cost of customer service in cases like this is complete BS.

I think Google passed the point of no return shortly after it went public -- because public corporations are, almost by definition, prone to "evil".

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