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Don’t Mess with The Google

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Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#21

Post by serge2k »

mendelk wrote: post #3

TL;DR: At least 200 people participated in a scheme in which they purchased (multiple) Pixel phones and had them shipped to a dealer in NH for resale to others, in contravention of the Google ToS. In response, Google suspended all their accounts, without the option to download any their stuff, including email and drive data, etc.

In a sane world Google would get a swift and harsh judgement against them for this.

Don't be evil. lol.

Anyone remember the glory days of the first sale doctrine? Before we started letting companies essentially make arbitrary binding rules at their whim.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#22

Post by relics443 »

Just curious here, but why are people outraged over this? They clearly violated Google's policy, and there were repercussions. Those rules are there to protect Google; perhaps their only legal recourse to cover themselves after a rule violation is to suspend the account?

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#23

Post by taurath »

Pretty incredible - especially with how little that a hardware product purchase has to do with a user's data. Imagine for a moment that google required people to have an account to access all their services - that they have the ability to cut you off arbitrarily across ALL their services for a TOS violation should scare anyone. Imagine if facebook cut your account and thereby ties to many of your friends and acquaintances for promoting a competing ad company?

These companies have lulled us into their systems with good intentions and free services, and now they wield tremendous power over our lives. I don't actually want to go back before the days where these services were fragmented and it was very difficult to juggle many closed services instead of a few. Still, its what happens when the company owns the whole vertical of individual user's data.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#24

Post by Y_Y »

drewcrawford wrote: post #16
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a ToS rule like that even legal? This comes a bit more from copyright law, but the US has the "right of first sale"[0] which guarantees individuals the right to sell works they purchased to someone else. I can't imagine this protection would be weaker on physical purchases. Additionally, Google's Terms of Service also says you own your data, including IP rights: "You retain ownership of any intellectual property r…

Yeah, very legal. The "right of first sale" means that you can't be sued (well, you can be sued but they would lose) if you sell a book you own. It doesn't say that the publisher of that book must continue to sell you additional copies or that the author won't give you a dirty look if you pass in the street or that someone may take steps that don't involve suing you for copyright infringement to discourage your activ…

As a quick aside, Google EU is based in Ireland, and under Ireland's data protection legislation you _are_ entitled to data the Google stores (including whatever tracking they're doing that you don't normally have access to).

    > Under Section 4 of the Data Protection Acts, 1988 and 2003, 
    > you have a right to obtain a copy, clearly explained, of any
    > information relating to you kept on computer or in a structured 
    > manual filing system or intended for such a system by any entity or organisation

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#26

Post by djsumdog »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #8

This really seems like it needs to be regulated in law. For telephone companies, there are rules about when they may disconnect you, e.g. the Arizona Utilities Division write > f I am unable to pay my entire bill, what can I do to maintain local dial tone? > The Arizona Administrative Code specifically states that a telephone company may not disconnect a customer for failure to pay an unregulated portion of their bil…

And with e-mail, that's often a means of authentication. Many services won't change your e-mail without sending an e-mail to your prior service.

You can essentially get locked out of your Steam account.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#27

Post by jerf »

macinjosh wrote: post #13

This just disgusts me. This is the problem with giving everything we rely on to a for profit corporation like Google, et al. It's not your data if they can take it away from you. Your data is their profit center so we should demand more of these companies or simply avoid them as much as possible.

Cheese off the government enough, and they'll freeze everything, bank accounts, ability to be hired, your freedom to not be in jail, everything, not just "your account with them".

The problem isn't the "profit" bit, it's the "everything" bit.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#28

Post by mos_basik »

el_benhameen wrote: post #20
throwaway76543 wrote: post #15

I recently made a decision to stop running my own mail server, figured it was long, long overdue to pay someone to handle my email for me. Stories like this are why I didn't pick gmail for this service, which would have otherwise been my first choice.

May I ask who you chose?

I am also interested.

A while back I set up email using my personal domain using Google Apps after discarding the idea of managing the while thing on a vps and after checking out a few providers like Protonmail. It basically came down to price and convenience; Google was on par with others for price and I really like the Inbox interface.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#29

Post by djsumdog »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #7

And this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is why you back up all of your files locally .

But e-mail is more than that. It's how many services authentication/re-authenticate you. You can't even connect a new computer to your Steam account without 2-factor. And if all you have is an e-mail account, then you loose access.
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