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Don’t Mess with The Google

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31–40 of 504 posts

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#31

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?

What if your landlord cut off access to your apartment, and everything inside, because you happened to have 3 guests visit and stay with you this month, instead of the 2 allowed by the lease? Would that be okay with you?

And that wouldn't even be as bad as this, because a lease is a far more legally applicable document unlike TOS's which no one reads. Further, at least your violation there is related to your apartment. The TOS being violated here was for a hardware device that isn't the service being disrupted. And the worst part is that the act that was in violation is one that governments want to encourage, to the point that owners are protected from being sued. Since Google can't attack them the ordinary way, they are using their leverage on those users with their other products to prevent them from conducting this act.

This whole thing is terrible in many ways.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#32
post #23

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 acquaint…

> 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

I do. I'm sick of the giant web companies. Especially since they make their money off fucking ads.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#34

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…

Regulate a free service?

I wonder if any G Suite customers had their accounts closed.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#36
post #25

What if you pay google a monthly/yearly fee for gmail? Can they cancel your account then?

Apparently so. On the Google Apps/G Suite (which is basically the paid business version of Google services, including Gmail) page about restoring a suspended user (https://support.google.com/a/answer/1110339), "You can’t restore an account that was suspended for abuse or for breaching the Google Terms of Service. To see why a user was suspended, click the exclamation on their account page for an error message. Then see below for your corresponding recovery options."

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#37

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?

Only speaking for myself, but I'm put off because Google is punishing its users with a digital death sentence because they sold a phone that was originally bought from Google at full retail price. Yes, it's against the service agreement for the Fi phone service, but at most Google should only be allowed to suspend the user's Fi account, not irretrievably delete their entire Google identity. It's retaliation and punishment, and it shouldn't be legal. Basically, Google is claiming that these folks paid full retail price for a device they don't actually get to own, as they apparently don't have a resale right to it. That's a load of horseshit as far as I'm concerned.

All of that said, this is a perfect example of why you should diversify your online services and always, always have an offline backup.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#38

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?

Not the OP, but I've been looking at Fastmail for a while to replace Gmail for a robust dedicated email service. I haven't felt the push to pull the trigger yet, until reading this article.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#39
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.

My response to Google deleting peoples email accounts.

Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work: This makes me laugh my ass off. This is a bit of a pet peeve I have with people and modern technology. They believe they have a right to use a service even though they're not paying for the usage of the service. Then they turn around shocked and angry when the free service is removed. `Why! why did they do this to me, this is the biggest injustice! How un-professional of them!`. Kind of like the dicussion I have with my collegues that `shouldn't you know.... support the open source frameworks we use to make money with?`... `Why would we do that?` ... Kind of leaves me speachless.

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