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Google users locked out after 15 years' use

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#441

Post by ctennis1 »

Uberphallus wrote: post #301
GekkePrutser wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even then you have to trust FastMail not to lock you out. Sure it's a paid service so less likely and I'm sure their customer service is better. But it doesn't fix the root issue of being dependent on one party.

Disclaimer: happy customer of FM for 8 years. The single time I needed support from them, I was replied by a person that understood my problem and while they didn't fix it (it was a feature request) it was added to their backlog. The suggestion appeared live like a year after and was contacted saying it was available in case I still wanted to use it. From Google, on the other hand, I never got a human reply to any is…

Happy fastmail customer of 5 years here.

I found a UI regression a few months back with the way threaded messages were working. Notified FM, they replied within a few hours acknowledging it was a bug and they would fix it asap. Fix was out within a few days, and they followed back to with me to confirm it was fixed for me.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#442

Post by brazzy »

rkalla wrote: post #255
grandpoobah wrote: post #147

This article finally prompted me to do what I should've done a long time ago, which is to create a Fastmail account and begin importing my Gmail into it. I've seen this story far too many times, and no longer will I say "yeah but it'll never happen to me". Setting up the import was insanely easy, and my Fastmail account is now configured to enable me to send using my Gmail address from directly within Fastmail. Plus…

I'm like you - it's been on my todo list for about 8 years... the thing that keeps my exit velocity insanely high is: 1. Entire family on @gmail 2. All Android phones setup to send photos to a shared family@google account so no one needs to 'send me those pictures from Anon's birthday' - it's all getting sent into the same account. I'm not sure how to seamlessly pull off #2 without trying to lift and move the entire…

> I'm not sure how to seamlessly pull off #2 without trying to lift and move the entire family over to iPhone's or something like that.

Get an owncloud/nextcloud account somewhere (or host your own) and use that instead. Works pretty much the same.

I switched from Dropbox to that about 2 years ago, not problems at all. Email, I'm still hesitation though I probably shouldn't.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#444

Post by kylebenzle »

londons_explore wrote: post #415
varispeed wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a great blog that started getting me over $2000 per month from Google Ads (several million views), then suddenly after 3 months it dropped to $300 with the same amount of views and never gone up. No matter how much promo I did I would never get past $300. It seems like Google somehow put restriction on my account without any explanation. Eventually my blog died (also because Facebook capped organic reach of my…

I used to work on adsense. There is no facility for an "earnings cap". Your revenue is the literal sum of earnings from every click on your property. While ads are showing and being clicked on, you will always be earning more. If I were to guess, you failed to implement ads.txt and/or your content didn't meet the standards required by some big advertisers, so auction pressure was very low for your site.

But people will always prefer to blame others and when you can blame a corporation for your problems its always an easier target.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#445

Post by boringg »

varispeed wrote: post #378
_imba_ wrote: post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

I had a great blog that started getting me over $2000 per month from Google Ads (several million views), then suddenly after 3 months it dropped to $300 with the same amount of views and never gone up. No matter how much promo I did I would never get past $300. It seems like Google somehow put restriction on my account without any explanation. Eventually my blog died (also because Facebook capped organic reach of my…

I get the sense that this was related to the content of OP's blog. The fact that he was concerned that he would get blocked from gmail and facebook sounds like a level of paranoia, from my perspective, related to the content of the site that's why they didn't push farther. I do see how if you were naturally a paranoid individually you might be concerned about losing those connections, though seems high unlikely they would cut access unless you were putting up shady content.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#446

Post by m4rtink »

wolco2 wrote: post #345
prepend wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a government regulator to stop large companies from buying up lots of small companies and adding them to this risk pool. I bought 3 Nest thermostats long before Google bought them. I wouldn’t have done so after the buyout. If google bricks my thermostats because my kid does something dumb on YouTube (through the linked tv accounts) that will suck. I suppose regulators could also prevent companies from bundli…

Nest sold you a poorly designed product. If they had sold you something that could be plugged into any network then you could reuse it. From the start the product had a big fault google buying it just highlights that design flaw.

For the record, there have been cases of companies (IIRC Cisco wifi routers) that attempted to do this retroactively - pushing a firmware update that "helpfully" made the hardware cloud managed only.

So indeed, buying open API stuff only is a good start, unfortunately one still needs to be vigilant.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#447

Post by LorenPechtel »

dheera wrote: post #433
_imba_ wrote: post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

I once created a location-based file sharing web app [0] to simplify sharing non-sensitive content with people nearby, e.g. sharing slides for a public presentation with a room full of people. Anyone nearby just had to go to http://quack.space -- no funny long URLs. I never monetized it, but it got quite a few users and I definitely could have started a path to monetization. I had ideas, such as incorporating locatio…

I suspect it was basically legit--somebody used it to try to spread malware, their spider found it.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#448

Post by ckocagil »

_imba_ wrote: post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

If this isn't evidence of a monopoly, I don't know what is.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#449

Post by brazzy »

gcc42 wrote: post #416
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hi all, Please be aware that this account is closed and I may now be reached at foo@bar.baz."

Oh man I'd pay so much to be able to own bar.baz.

You'd likely regret it: https://www.bar.com

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#450

Post by buildbuildbuild »

This happened to me. I tried for years to contact Google including via back channels. I received no responses. They contacted me recently only to notify me that my data was purged from their archives.

I bought into the dream of the cloud early as a GMail beta user. I used Drive extensively and imported other email accounts into GMail. Now I don’t have decades of important messages and records.

Don’t trust centralization. Hold backups on storage you fully control.

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