141–150 of 296 posts
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Arbitration is void in Europe. That's 500 million people who can sue them. However, given that it takes years for any case to settle, if you could even find how to start the process in the first place, that ain't happening.
Isn't project fi exclusively a US thing? Why wouldn't google just get it thrown out due to lack of jurisdiction when sued in Europe?
This is the difference between Google and Amazon. People have lots of criticism of Amazon, some I even agree with, but working here[0] one of my favorite little cultural things is that customers can and do email Jeff when stupid things happen. And Jeff reads them. Every now and then he'll forward one of them to a senior VP with a simple "?" added to it.[1] That question mark indicates two things: that you have 24 hou…
Should have just done a credit card charge back at this point.
This is the difference between Google and Amazon. People have lots of criticism of Amazon, some I even agree with, but working here[0] one of my favorite little cultural things is that customers can and do email Jeff when stupid things happen. And Jeff reads them. Every now and then he'll forward one of them to a senior VP with a simple "?" added to it.[1] That question mark indicates two things: that you have 24 hou…
I don't think it's just that. I believe that Google is used to having captive faceless optionless voiceless customers, of it's search and ad platform from whom it derives most of us revenue, that most other kinds of customers don't matter.
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I don't think they will actually... A credit card chargeback bans you from Google Pay/Wallet/Android Pay/Google merchant services/google shopping basket/gBilling/whatever it's called now and all services requiring payment. I think you can still use gmail/youtube/whatever.
You would think that the credit card companies would have 'fines' for companies that retaliate against their customers. Something nice like $10k per violation.
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I’m writing this from Australia where I arrived today and my Sprint phone roams for free: I get free texts and slow 2g/3g data(enough for WhatsApp and FaceTime audio calls) as well as $0.25 phone calls. 2 years ago when I was also visiting Australia I was with T-Mobile which offered similar free/low cost roaming. It’s not ideal, but its an alternative to Google Fi
The difference is in quality. I am also right now in Sydney, on the last day of my week-long business trip, and I have had constant 4G connection with Google Fi. Back when I had T-Mo I needed to find WiFi whenever I needed to download a large attachment, and obviously whenever I wanted to stream videos. Now I don't even ask for the WiFi password. And yes, I'll be watching Game of Thrones this evening using my phone's…
Two stories spring to mind. The first is I worked at Google when the whole "real names" saga of Google Plus was going on. The worst part about that was if some algorithm decided your name wasn't real, it could block your entire Google account. You'd lose access to GMail, Drive, everything. I don't know what bright spark PMs, lawyers and executives signed off on that one but it was insanity. As a result I would strong…
> Let me repeat that and make it clear: Google simply cannot compete in a low margin business. That reminds me of Intel. The addiction to high margin microprocessors and a captive customer base had two effects. a) Intel doesn't know how to play with customers that have a choice. b) Customers with a choice avoid designing in Intel solutions like the plague. Over the long haul Intel is a much smaller company than they…
Here's where that really hurts them (IMHO). Google, as a whole, has a very short attention span. A lot of things at Google began as bottom-up engineering-led projects, the poster child for which is probably GMail. This seems to work really well for things that are engineering problems. I think it works incredibly badly for a bunch of other things though.
We, as engineers, tend to get bored. There are all sorts of quotes for this in software development like after you finish the first 90% you need to finish the second 90% (I forget who said this).
I see project after project come out of Google that might be promising but it gets abandoned as the talent moves on to the next hot thing until finally it's killed. The cost of this, as you say, is paid by future projects.
The classic counterexample to me is Apple Pay (vs Google Checkout/Google Wallet/Google Pay/Android Pay/Whatever it's called now). Every few weeks Apple announces some new bank or merchant or country is launched. Over years now they've slowly been building out this ecosystem. Google just doesn't have the commitment, focus and attention for this schlep [1], which is why they'll lose. Apple does.
Apple has their failures too (Ping anyone?) but it's fair to say Apple really does put more wood behind fewer arrows [2].
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
[2] https://www.techradar.com/news/internet/page-more-wood-behin...