How to become an unpaid technical support worker for Google
google.com
google.com
I've since switched to a paid email provider.
I seemed to have misremembered: I only got a single reply from a top contributor. The links pointing to other people with the same issue may have been automatic (the website looked different when I originally posted the question)
But when you're getting a product for free, especially email (Hotmail/Live Mail, Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, etc) you really can't expect any provider to provide comprehensive one-on-one support as it is rather pricey. So you're right to go to a paid plan somewhere.
In my experience, a common problem with support is that they lack the knowledge and capabilities to deal with certain types of support requests. At some point, some support requests need to be escalated to the product owners within the organization. Some organizations are simply not prepared for those types of support requests.
Email does seem like a service that should be recoverable, though. If you depend on it heavily enough, you should probably:
(a) Own the domain that emails are going to. (so that if Google stumbles, you can switch providers)
(b) Have full records of all accounts & aliases. (so that you can continue to receive incoming mail following any switch of providers)
(c) Backup all email regularly. (so that you don't lose all existing mail in the event of needing to switch providers)
1. Write a blog post about it
2. Get the blog post to the top of Hacker News
3. Get a bunch of people to tweet @Google because of it.
4. Have Google begrudgingly contact you and fix the problem.
I don't know why you insist on making it so complicated.
1. Be Taylor Swift
2. Write blog post
3. Have the company publicly fix the issue for all users in one go.
last resort from working software was only 9.95 but even so we had unlimited free tech support. that gave us a good reason to keep product quality high.
what we have now are confusing, poorly thought out user interface, code that crashes and no tech support.
We see much lamenting about lack of innovation in "business plans" around here, and yet we have an historic opportunity to examine the relationship between value creation and compensation. Why is the Etsy IPO plan so exceptional? Why do so menu community members of instagram, reddit, etc end-up feeling betrayed by the services they helped create?
However, it's a bit more subtle than that. Yes, Stackoverflow is making some money, but everyone who contributes gets a few things out of it too:
1. They get the use value of the overall result. This is a non-trivial value. Linux operates under similar dynamics. A lot of "free" code was written, and it was written to improve on the use value in the body of code they found at the time.
Anyone finding Stackoverflow sees a lot of use value and they may well see improving on it in a similar way.
2. Reputation. I like to think of this as "feed the net and the net feeds you." Back in the USENET days, I was very highly active on SGI computers. Sometimes I wondered about the overall value of that. Then I got stuck on some painful Oracle installation issue. All I had to do was ask, and within an hour I got a nice script mailed to me along with a thanks for all the filesystem / disk questions I sorted out for people. (thanks Jerry)
Given the dollars in play at the time, that script was worth a ton!
3. Network, similar to reputation. My many interactions on the net has often resulted in knowing people who I could help or get help from or start projects with.
Clearly, this all must be balanced and weighed by everyone involved. People who do too much might seem over exploited or suffer opportunity costs of various kinds. And we all see what is worth what a little differently too.
But, it's not exactly free. There is value exchanged and accumulated. Making sure that happens is worth something. Maybe it's worth about what Stackoverflow is taking in.
USENET worked, until it didn't. And when it didn't, it all went down hard. Huge value lost. Maybe that won't happen this time, and frankly I think that's worth a profit to somebody because the use value is high enough to be painful should it go missing.
The data dumps are hosted at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange
More generally, welcome to the new normal. The money-spewing circleparty is fizzling out, thankfully. People increasingly feel safe and confident in challenging the morality and societal value of these corporations. Blasé compliance is no longer expected in tech and many of us (those of us that upvote these things) are working to keep it that way.
Google is big, scary, and the new Microsoft, whether or not that's fiscally or professionally convenient for you.
Google actually does support the free offerings pretty well. They just don't do it on a case by case basis. Anybody who wants that has the option to pay Google to get it.
Otherwise, Google does invest time into making sure it works well for everyone and isn't just letting it all sit out there slowly breaking...
No one expects intensive 24/7 support for free webmail, but Google's balance of profit and support is off. Free-tier users aren't cattle, especially not when you're tracking them.
If you pay Google, their support is much improved.
I don't expect any support for free web mail. And yes, I back mine up, from time to time, or pay for that support.
You may well value things differently, but that's not necessarily on Google.
I switched my texting/gv to hangouts on my phone, now I can't add someone that texts me to my contact list without trying to call them first. I also can't seem to SMS someone from hangouts in my contact list on my desktop without manually typing in their phone number. Pretty big UI/UX oversights (or not).
There's really no way to actually get in touch with appropriate googlers. There's no real evidence that product owners participate where the people actually are.
What might be better, would be to approach the StackExchange guys, or even just riff their interface for a google branded services site, and have actual google employees participate. I tend to see a lot of the same lacking regarding general Windows / Microsoft support, but SO/SE fill a lot of the void... I don't think I've really seen googlers participate. Maybe they should bring back that 20% time to participate in either these forums on SO, or GH issues.
Does that have to happen?
A googler participated on Quora a while back, and it was related to the compose window changes. Was an interesting thing. Several of us wrote up the issues with that change, and the response was "I think Google is getting pretty close to optimal on this feature" and not much else.
They've got their metrics, and they've set them in various ways, and the product offerings are there to take or leave. When tons of people take them, great! When they don't, they do what they think might improve on that, or remove the product.
I get the feeling Google watches the dialog, and they take input that way, but they rarely have direct dialogs where they can end up committed in some fashion.
The more expected model is customer driven, and I agree with you on your observation. Google isn't necessarily doing it that way, or not directly.
But do they have to?
That's the question. It's also a potential abuse of their position, and I find it very intriguing to think about.
Mostly, their products add value to my life, and the costs associated with them do not trump that. So it's good for me, and I don't worry so much about the little things.
They are little things!
Like the phone UI. Or what they did with Inbox. There are some limitations. Take it or leave it. You could switch away from hangouts and be just fine, right?
In the scheme of things, UI issues aren't the same as, it doesn't work, or it hurt me, type issues.
Gmail always sends it's mail. If it didn't, that would be a major support issue. Gmail sometimes is borked on the UI, or my browser, or I don't get a draft saved when I thought I might have one, etc...
(On a phone, I find it difficult to edit a draft without actually going to the drafts list of messages, for example. The desktop allows it.)
Those things are annoyances, but they always have work arounds and I can get it done, so I just go and get it done, and if I can get it done, how much support do I really need?
IMHO, this is close to how Google thinks of things, and they get to do that, and I get to select them or not.
I've seen companies invest a TON on every little thing, completely customer driven. I've seen that work out OK, and I've seen it fail too. Failure in the sense that the product could have been taken somewhere awesome, but for lack of resources. Maybe it's that "support every little thing" drain that killed it?
Fair questions, if you ask me.
Indeed, most of the useful information about Google tools come from SO!
Google already monetize their service by making me see ads(which is fair). SO monetize their service by showing me employment opportunities (which to me is better). Google model doesn't need the community to work... The entire SO model is a paying forward knowledge transfer.
So... At least to they it is not the same thing.
The only thing SO has done different is better branding towards top contributors, and judging from your post they've done it by targeting ads towards the top contributors.
Except it is. Most people aren't contributing answers on SO about how to use SO. They are contributing answers about how to use JS or C or PHP or how to solve a particular programming problem. SO did not create JS or C or PHP or any other programming language or framework discussed on SO. Google's program is to get people to support products Google created so that Google doesn't have to support its products itself.
For the time being, at least, Google's Top Contributor program doesn't seem to offer any practical benefits.
I answered dozens of questions for many days, thinking it will help build credibility (as suggested by another commenter). Then I realized I'm just volunteering as level 1 support, and decided it's not worth it.
The "benefits of becoming a top contributor" video made me want to bash my head into a wall.
"Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs are exceptional community leaders who actively share their high-quality, real-world deep technical expertise with the community and with Microsoft. They are committed to helping others get the most out of their experience with Microsoft products and technologies."
These people are going to exist whether there's a program or not, so why not create a program to recognize them?
Your example is irrelevant because that's part of a paid career, not free labor farmed with manipulative YouTube videos.
It's also true basically all unpaid internships are illegal and interns can easily sue for back wages, FWIW.
I also am not sure that having a class of people in this country that can't afford to raise a family on a single income while working 40+ hours a week is so much different than slavery.
In this case, I don't fault google for trying, I just think their approach is probably wrong, and you really don't see enough googlers (paid employees) respond to any of the threads you happen across.