German court requires Google to stop ignoring customer emails
computerworld.com
computerworld.com
- The suing party is a german group whose officially recognized reason for existence is to protect customer rights.
- If Google doesn't fix this, up to 250k€ per instance of violation (sadly not clarified what instance means), or jail up to 6 months (sic) or jail up to 6 months. (Unclear how that is supposed to be done.)
- Google has to pay 200€ + 5% interest, starting on 13.12.2013. (I don't know over which timeframe this interest accrues.)
- Google has to pay all process costs, as it's the losing party.
- Google offers services which it runs as a business, either by reserving the right to use customer data in a business manner (hangouts, docs, calendar) or by advertising (search, do note that TV broadcasting for example is a business with customers too).
- Google is required to make it possible to reach individual personal contact with a human employee at Google.
- The court recognizes and has discussed with Google that the problems of scale here are very real, but still insists on the fact that the current solution is not acceptable.
- The court even offers suggestions, such as providing multiple email adresses in the impressum to aid in channeling.
- Crucial to the court is that pointing at an online form is not enough, especially since the pointing is done at a maze of help pages which may, or may not, lead to an online form.
- The court recognizes that the law does not specify how the company has to communicate once person-to-person communication is established.
- The court recognizes that "not answering" is also a valid reaction, if and when a human employee has read/heard the request; BUT ONLY IF that kind of answer is not the rule.
- The court recognizes that efficient communication is not done by answering quickly, but by answering in a reasonable time frame and with detail according to the reasonable expectations of a user. (Thus implying that users may have unreasonable expectations which need not be fulfilled.)
- The court also recognizes that not all emails need to be read. The problem is that none are read. Google may filter and channel emails as it likes, as long as the system's goal is explicitly to enable communication via email; not as it currently is, to deny communication.
> Google can appeal the ruling. The company did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Hmm, personalized e-mail support for an entire nation, or US$323,000. Wonder which one finance will recommend?
I mean, if you're going to fine private companies for non-misleading, non-fraudulent behavior, then do it right like the US: $250,000 per day of non-compliance.
Better yet, just let the market take care of it. If people really dislike not having e-mail support, they'll stop using Google. So far, it's pretty clear that people value Google services more than they do personalized customer support, since it's almost universally known that Google provides zero support for free accounts, and limited support for even paid accounts.
This is from §890 (1) of the German Code of Civil Procedure [1]. It's €250,000 per violation of an injunction, and if that doesn't suffice to enforce the injunction, the court can also order coercive detention (i.e., putting you in jail). Essentially, it's the German equivalent of dealing with contempt of court in case of an injunction; it's not strictly a fine, it's a coercive measure, one that can be escalated.
[1] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_zpo/englisch_zpo....
When they are locked out of their account and first realize that support is non-existent? Happens all the time, happened to me once (no, I didn't forget my password).
> since it's almost universally known that Google provides zero support for free accounts
Universally known among techies.
This doesn't mean that every incoming email should now be checked and processed individually by a Google employee, the court said. [...] It was left up to Google how to deal with future incoming email.
So Google doesn't need to respond to "How do I change the color of my inbox?" or "New design sucks!". But in case of serious trouble, a customer can expect the possibility of contacting a human.
It is obviously not enough to simply say "we don't read it". It thereby follows that it it not ok to not have a channel of communication. This implies that emails who are sent to the support address must have the option to be responded to - if they are important enough. Because if they are all just never answered, this is the same as not having a communication channel in the first place.
My guess is that it has to be a ranking based on importance. Of course it is necessary to answer each one, like "How do I find the google website". But it might be that - in germany - things like having an account closed people relied upon in good faith and than not responding to inquiries why is problematic, given that this can high and monetary personal consequences (violation of customer protection laws, to which all of this is referring - and yes, this is not fully dependent on whether they pay. Imagine important document stored only there - maybe created there, so it is not totally not understandable not having a backup already - and then lost, thus causing a million dollar company to fail. I'm exaggerating, but stuff like that).
Further, having an available contact channel is necessary to be able to submit legal documents, though I expect that Google has another avenue for that already.
Taking serious inquires seriously?
Not everything is a black/white situation.
I don't think that fact is widely known among the general public, especially in countries where people assume (due to the law requiring it) that any company can be contacted and will reply to reasonable inquiries. It wouldn't be odd for someone in that case to assume that Google also has an address where they respond to inquiries, since every business does (or should).
You could make the same argument you made in the other direction: If Google really dislikes responding to email, just don't do business in Germany. It seems so far that most companies value doing business in Germany more than they value the right not to respond to email. It's almost universally known that companies doing business in Germany must provide a contact address where they respond to inquiries, so this isn't really a misleading or unexpected feature.
But since they openly state that the email address is not monitored, they do not fulfil the requirements of the law.
It's perfectly fine never to respond to any email sent there.
They just have to accept that mails sent there can have legal effects.
The problem is basically that by telling everyone "I don't read it" they are suggesting to others that they cannot successfully (in a legal sense) contact Google using that email address. And that's wrong.
That's not what the decision says.
But it's a minor point in the grounds, it's dicta at best.
It doesn't say in the article, so does anyone know if the relevant German law requires free support? Can Google charge $500 per email to respond to user email, for example?
(2) This is a requirement for anybody who offers services that are generally provided for a fee, even if in this particular instance it is offered for free (e.g. because it is financed through advertising or a freemium model). See §5 of the German Telemedia Act [1].
[1] http://www.cgerli.org/fileadmin/user_upload/interne_Dokument...
2. details which permit rapid electronic contact and direct communication with them, including the electronic mail address
( fee is emphasized by me )
I would argue that free services do not fall under this rule.
(generally is emphasized by me)
The argument can be made that showing someone ads in return for services is offering things commercially. C.f. free tv channels with ad-breaks.
(c) the details of the service provider, including his electronic mail address, which allow him to be contacted rapidly and communicated with in a direct and effective manner;
Replying with an automated answer saying that actual human response is not an option, is certainly not direct and effective.
Y'know, I'm starting to question this oft-repeated adage. If websites are demanding that I watch their ads (although Google so far doesn't and lets me adblock in peace), then I'm a customer. I'm paying with my attention for the website's service. I'm doing something I wouldn't otherwise do in exchange for a service.
So I say people watching Google's ads are as much their customers as the people paying Google to put up those ads. If Google sufficiently angers either group, they lose business.
This is a requirement for doing business online in Germany.
Do the people who make such outraged, generalised and sweeping statements online think of the consequences, i.e. that they look foolish?
In other words: If you have a business address then you should at least look at / read your mail. Responding is optional.
That is ostensibly the case, it's just that it doesn't fit very well with the fact that Google was just ruled against for doing exactly that: Not responding to even a single email.
What, exactly, is the expectation here? Is it better that Google leaves people looking for help hanging in the dark, rather than auto responding with pointers to self-help?
My reading is that it is all about 'establishing contact' and not necessarily about receiving an email answer.
http://www.vzbv.de/cps/rde/xbcr/vzbv/google-lg_berlin-2014-0...
Page 4 at the bottom.
"Es muesse fuer den Verbracher moeglich sein, den Dienstenanbieter auch ohne vorheriges Ausfuellen eines Formulrs zu kontaktieren."
Freely translated:
"It must be possible for the user, to contact the party offering a service without prior filling out of a form."
"Es kann auch hiernach nicht Aufgabe des TMG sein, eine Antwort oder eine bestimmte Qualität der Antwort zu erzwingen. Es genügt die abstrakte Möglichkeit, dass Kommunikation aufgenommen wird, eine Reaktion erfolgt. Auch ein Nichtantworten kann eine Reaktion sein. Wenn aber Nichtantworten Prinzip ist, kann nicht mehr von Kommunikation die Rede sein."
translated by me:
"Hereafter it cannot be the function of the TMG to force a reply or a certain quality of the reply. The abstract possibility that communication is started, a reaction happens, suffices. A nonreply can be a reaction, as well. But if not replying is the principle, one cannot speak of communication anymore."
The 'categoric rejection' was the problem, not the lack of a specific answer.
It makes good sense to me that if someone wants to do business with you that you need to be able to talk to them somehow. Even if they refuse to talk back. They still have to have a way to be informed of stuff.
It's not as if millions of visitors per second automatically translates into millions of emails per second and if you keep your customers happy they typically do not email you all that frequently.
I actually like those German laws, even though I'm not a resident.
What are you talking about?
> and making Google Street View close to illegal.
No, Street View is perfectly legal in Germany. There was public outrage, which I couldn't understand, but it wasn't a legal issue at all.
I assume one has to pay monies to a company to make themselves a customer. I doubt even 2% of Google users actually pay.
Would this change the business model of a lot of start ups? You bet it would. But it would change it for the better in the customer's eyes. Maybe the "free tier" becomes the free trial, time-limited. Maybe paid users will no longer subsidize the paid users. Maybe companies will think through their business model a little more and not offer free service for just long enough to get embedded in someone's life then realize they have to shut down for lack of money.
I would love to see a shift from "user" to "customer". You don't have 200,000 users if they're not paying you. You have 200,000 customers and 0 profit.
If you operate a business in germany and have a website you have to have an "impressum". Even most personal sites put up an "impressum" even if they are not required too, just because everyone is scared of the "impressumspflicht".
It would make more sense if the rule just applied to paying customer and not random users.
So no, Google is not targeted because they are a cashcow, Google is targeted because they are large and ignore a bunch of law because they think they can get away with it because they are large. The simpler thing would be to simply comply with the law but they choose the confrontational road and rulings like these are the result.
Companies are still not larger than nation states. Maybe one day they will be but for now the nation states seem to have the upper hand when it comes to enforcement.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21615588-why-online-g...
Of course, that's just common sense. How can you run a company and not respond to people who contact you? Can anyone really object to this requirement? Obviously, a generated response does not fulfil it. You should be able to talk to a human.
Repeat that reasoning 1000 times and it becomes much clearer why Europe is being dwarfed economically by the US http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...
What a ridiculous way to compare the size of economies. Dwarfed means to me to be substantially larger. But in actual fact it's going neck-and-neck:
http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/p/largest...
Number of large companies founded is not a relevant metric if you want to compare the economies of continent sized entities.
All that seemingly sensible regulation is exactly how we keep reducing ourselves to playing catch-up and not even very well. http://online.wsj.com/articles/galileo-satellites-launched-i...
That's so incredibly off-base that I don't know where to start with the corrections. What you mean is 'the few large multinationals that dominate a few very visible segments'.
You could (wrongly) turn that around just as easily and point to the WWW created in Switzerland (on a network stack created in the US), that Linus Torvalds is Finnish by birth and that his creation powers all those phones and that search engine (he's moved to the united states now) and so on.
The world is a lot more interconnected and if the US economy goes down so does the EU and vice versa.
There is no 'individual success' any more than there will be 'individual failure'.
Facebook and Google are outliers from SV, by your standards the rest of the US should feel about as miserable as the EU.
Where are all the great start-ups from Northern Michigan, from New York, from Washington DC?
Sure there will be exceptions but they're not facebook or google or Apple for that matter.
But neither are any of those BMW, Mercedes or VW. Nor are they TomTom (nl), Logitech (ch), nor Tata Steel (Indian, the world is larger than just the US or the EU).
Economies are no longer disconnected and EU and US per-capita size of their respective economies is very comparable.
It's just that in the US the economic output (and the wealth distribution) is less even and so you notice the outliers. If you cut California out there would be a severe imbalance.
There are three major reasons web start-ups from the US have an easier time going to Europe than the other way around: Access to capital, a very large homebase speaking for the most part one language, and Europeans adapting easier to using English than US users adapting to using a website in a different language than their mother tongue.
Copycats like the Samwer brothers capitalize handily on the discrepancy during the short window of opportunity between a successful launch of something States-side and the subsequent roll out to the rest of the world. And for the local hold-outs who do not wish to conduct business in a language not their own.
BMW, Mercedes or VW
Founded, respectively, in 1916, 1926, and 1937. Those are some great companies but from completely different times. Neither Saint Peter's Basilica nor the Colosseum tell you much about modern Italy. Those are vestiges of glorious (well, usually) past.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft are outliers from among American startups and typical by being American. Luckily, the world is interconnected so we can buy their products.
Really, there is a ton going on in Europe, but it just isn't as much cult-of-personality oriented in as in the US, nor does it typically become a world wide brand. Things are slower, but just different, not worse.
And if they would be worse then those per-capita-gdp's would be quite different.
Another way to look at it is gdp per man/woman hour worked. And on that scale Europe comes out ahead. You can compare these two until the cows come home, in the end the differences are much smaller than the similarities.
SV is an outlier for the world, not just for the US.
But it didn't happen here. Great invention and then nothing. Even something as simple as Geocities took off in the US.
And TomTom is like 1/60th of Google. This whole company exemplifying European IT success is a side gig for Google.
In GDP per hour worked the US also trumps pretty much every European country. Europe as a whole doesn't come close, not to mention ahead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...
Right. What a pity that that WWW thing went nowhere.
And anyway, by your chosen measure EU is clearly doing worse, right?
Heck, half of the iPhone is based on Samsung parts and other stuff created by Chinese etc manufacturers (talking about out-sourced parts, not the mere assembly).
So when you are dealing with crappy Comcast support, you are still happy beacause at least you are doing business with a FT Global 500 company?
Maybe the chart can in part be explained by Europeans' preference of approachable mid-tier companies ("Mittelstand") over megacorps. Futhermore, the EU consists of 28 sovereign countries, most with their own language, so a higher economic fragmentation is inevitable.
Yes, Europe has fallen behind in the IT business, and bureaucracy is too widespread. But that chart doesn't have a lot to do with this.
There are better and more accurate metrics to compare economies.
E.g both (EU and US) have a GDP of about 16 trillion USD, despite EU also including lots of quite poor ex-socialist countries, and not being a same-language homegenous market.
Heck, EU is 26+ countries each with far more autonomy and diversity than state have between them, something which also keeps cross-EU big companies smaller.
Obvious misinformed snark is obvious.
We have a lot of institutions that would make americans shiver in fright, but give us germans a nice warm feeling because we know that there's someone actually looking out for us.
We have a nationally recognized group for the protection of customers. We have a group for the protection of children from bad influences in media, like hate speech or glorification of violence. We have a government office for the protection of the unemployed, which makes it possible for them to continue living a dignified life and helps them reintegrate into the working community. We have strong laws protecting employees from capricious acts by employers. We have a state program to protect the elderly when they cannot work to support themselves anymore, by enabling them to live a dignified life. We have state health insurance and laws in place to ensure that a german citizen would have to actively break the law to not be protected by affordable health insurance. Just to name a few.
All of this protects every one of us and means that we're free to help and aid one another without having to worry about giving too much or empowering a potential adversary. It also increases everyone's quality of life; for example education is at a comparably high level for everyone, and we don't have cities who need to think hard about homeless, because we don't have epidemics of homeless.
We don't care about having giant IT companies which could buy small countries. We're glad to have everyone have a good chance at a decent life.
> nanny-state measures (protect children from bad influences)
Putting age labels on things is all fine and good, but if kids can go to any store and legally buy things like the Doom series, or Manhunt, without requiring their parents, then that's a bit of a farce. All germany has done in that respect is to force stores to actually check ages, and not publicly advertise things with certain contents. Adults can still get anything they like, and give it to their children if they feel like it.
> and other don't seem to be working (hate speech is rampant in Germany)
Honestly curious, how so? I won't deny we still have some bad elements, and every one in a while (once a year or so) a politician may say a dumb thing and get lambasted to hell and back; but i don't think we have anything comparing to the outright white power hitler fetishist groups in the usa, or Glenn Beck, or Westboro Church.
> I don't think protecting citizens against bad e-mail service counts as a critical protection measure
You seem to have misunderstood. Citizens aren't being protected against "bad email service". Citizens are being protected against a being entirely blocked out of ever reaching human contact when they have legit grievances against a company doing business with them. Read the very top post where the court's stance is explained.