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Gmail has become unusably slow

gabrielweinberg.com

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Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#111

Post by illumin8 »

rufo wrote: post #66
lutorm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are running Gmail through google apps for enterprises, then you do have customer support options. Of course, then you also pay.

E-mail support is only for "select administrative issues", and phone support is only for reporting "a service unusable issue caused by a Google server error"[1]. It doesn't sound like the GP's issue would fall into either of those categories. [1]: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

Exactly. I'm not paying for the service so I can't really complain, but when many users report a bug in 2009, where Google Calendar completely chokes and can't delete or modify meeting requests with more than a handful of recipients, you would expect a company like Google to at least reply "we've opened a bug and are working on fixing this issue."

Instead, the silence on their troubleshooting forums is deafening. It's as if the engineers just don't care about fixing it, despite what would happen in the real world if a Google Apps sales rep came to our company to do a real evaluation... I suspect they would be laughed out of the room once they admitted they couldn't handle meeting invites with more than a handful of attendees.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#112

Post by scorpion032 »

gojomo wrote: post #68

In a last ditch effort, I bought some extra storage from Google thinking maybe I'd get some kind of premium level service. So far, no. Ah, to be Google! Your competitors , when frustrated by your poor service and unclear communications, send you more money in the vain hope it might help.

Now, That's a clever catch!

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#113

Post by PStamatiou »

nooneelse wrote: post #90
daten wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Don't mistake non-paying for no-profit. Those users don't pay cash but they do give google lots of personal data and ad-clicks that makes google money. I would personally rather pay a fee and keep my data private and not see ads. If google loses "non-paying" customers because of performance issues or outages that they d…

"I would personally rather pay a fee and keep my data private and not see ads." I thought that one could do that with a Premier Edition Google Apps account.

Yes they can. I have been on Google Apps Premier for 2 or 3 years now.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#114

Post by stef25 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #91
daten wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Don't mistake non-paying for no-profit. Those users don't pay cash but they do give google lots of personal data and ad-clicks that makes google money. I would personally rather pay a fee and keep my data private and not see ads. If google loses "non-paying" customers because of performance issues or outages that they d…

I put together my own mail server on Linode a while back, after getting frustrated with Gmail's ridiculously limited filtering and tagging. I use RoundCube webmail, Dovecot, Postfix, managesieve, SpamAssassin, and a few custom hacks. It works great . Gmail used to have the added annoyance of making Firefox unusably slow if it was open for hours at a time; I now can have my mailbox open for days at a time with no brow…

Isn't the appeal of Gmail its slick ajax interface and the fact that mails are presented as threads?

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#116

Post by Poiesis »

wmeredith wrote: post #75
Vivtek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, this article isn't about Gmail performance nearly as much as it is another article about Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency. Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses - but that's it. Google is not interested in hearing about problems, and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, th…

You get what you pay for. End of story.

I have found that while you don't always get what you pay for, you generally don't get what you don't pay for.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#117

Post by Vivtek »

andreyf wrote: post #73
Vivtek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, this article isn't about Gmail performance nearly as much as it is another article about Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency. Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses - but that's it. Google is not interested in hearing about problems, and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, th…

Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Run the numbers: if the average user calls in 5 minutes a year (very low estimate), how many hours a day of customer support would it take? And transparency - are you suggesting they open source their infrastructure so you can hack on Big…

Other people have already commented effectively on the two components of your reply, but let me say that I found the transparency straw man to be the weirder of the two, because that's not how I use that word.

I'd also like to note that from a technical standpoint, I think Google is fantastic. They do great work, I love where they're going with services, and I personally have no complaint with Gmail nor could I improve things were I magically in charge.

But their nearly autistic attitude towards dealing with users is a real problem, and as large as they are, I think they bear a real moral responsibility to make the world a better place. "Don't be evil" is a great motto. I have every reason to believe they try to live up to it. But disengagement from their users to the incredible extent that Google practices it verges dangerously close to evil when it affects so very many people.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#118

Post by donohoe »

nfnaaron wrote: post #56
donohoe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't mistake lack of customer service for 'disdain'. For every issue related to Googles free products and services when have you ever really, and I mean really needed a traditional customer service rep? Maybe once? Not at all? I would hate Gmail never to have happened becuase they felt it would require a call center and they were not prepared to do that... And as for 'transparency'... um, they're a private company.…

[comments] " ... um, they're a private company. ..." Screeeeeeech! http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog [comments]

Sorry - my bad. I meant in so much as a government agency etc should be transparent (but that's not a great example either) :)

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#119

Post by kragen »

andreyf wrote: post #73
Vivtek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, this article isn't about Gmail performance nearly as much as it is another article about Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency. Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses - but that's it. Google is not interested in hearing about problems, and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, th…

Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Run the numbers: if the average user calls in 5 minutes a year (very low estimate), how many hours a day of customer support would it take? And transparency - are you suggesting they open source their infrastructure so you can hack on Big…

Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users?

No, that would be very difficult. They have only about 20 000 employees. That's 9000 users per employee.

The problem is, the vast majority of those 176 million people have chosen to be in a position where they depend on a service that is run by people who don't care about them personally — who can't care about them, because there are just too many of them. This inevitably means that some of those people, maybe many of them, will get caught in the machine and mangled.

The solution is to provide services like email in a distributed way, instead of with a centralized company. Then, when you have a problem like this, you have access to someone who could plausibly fix it.

The difficulty is that our facilities for providing big centralized servers are leaps and bounds ahead of our facilities for building decentralized applications.

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