Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

consumerist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 258 posts

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#21

Post by eli »

kenjackson wrote: post #15
GvS wrote: post #6

Google+ makes getting backup of all your data really easy ( https://www.google.com/takeout/ ). I'm really worried about Google horror stories but I like using their services, so I'll just settle with doing regular backups.

Sounds like a great service. Then I went to use it... it doesn't backup email?! I got my contacts and some random stuff that I didn't know I had (and don't care about). But where's my couple of gigs of email? Is there a different service for that?

There are scripts to do it via IMAP, but it takes a very long time and it's a bit of a pain to set up.

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#22

Post by jdunlop »

danilocampos wrote: post #13
c2 wrote: post #5

Google has a support problem. I'm amazed after almost a decade of offering services like email and advertising, they still haven't done anything to develop a reasonable support system for customers to address issues like this. Maybe they have a few open lines with their top 1% of customers but the attitude that "it's free, you are a meaningless statistic in our giant revenue stream so too bad" for the rest of their c…

But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers . They're product sold to advertisers. When I was spending a few million a year on AdWords, guess who had a direct line to Google, both via email and on the phone? I could talk to those guys whenever I wanted about campaigns, get advice on improving my keyword mix, budgeting strategies, any of that stuff. From this business' point of view, individuals ju…

I have to admit, this whole story gives me pause. I live and breath by my gmail account, and it they decide to deactivate it for no good reason (or refuse to help me after the fact), how can I be expected to use their services with any confidence? Perhaps my planned migration to google+ is on hold...

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#23

Post by palish »

danilocampos wrote: post #13
c2 wrote: post #5

Google has a support problem. I'm amazed after almost a decade of offering services like email and advertising, they still haven't done anything to develop a reasonable support system for customers to address issues like this. Maybe they have a few open lines with their top 1% of customers but the attitude that "it's free, you are a meaningless statistic in our giant revenue stream so too bad" for the rest of their c…

But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers . They're product sold to advertisers. When I was spending a few million a year on AdWords, guess who had a direct line to Google, both via email and on the phone? I could talk to those guys whenever I wanted about campaigns, get advice on improving my keyword mix, budgeting strategies, any of that stuff. From this business' point of view, individuals ju…

The world would be a better place if if companies focused on "people", and not on "money".

Of course that's unrealistic. But I don't care. I grew up believing in Star-Trek-style society. You know... "Social problems are gone; people are free to devote themselves to improving themselves; etc". I honestly believed that humanity would someday achieve this.

I used to believe most people were inherently good, and that they are naturally adverse to doing unethical things, and that if they did something unethical by accident, then they would go out of their way to fix it, even if they weren't obligated to. Because it's the right thing to do.

Needless to say, Real Life came as a nasty surprise.

You're a bad person for not caring about That One Guy Who You Deleted 7 Years Of His Life. But hey, our capitalistic society encourages not caring, so it must be okay, right?

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#25

Post by hn_decay »

danilocampos wrote: post #13
c2 wrote: post #5

Google has a support problem. I'm amazed after almost a decade of offering services like email and advertising, they still haven't done anything to develop a reasonable support system for customers to address issues like this. Maybe they have a few open lines with their top 1% of customers but the attitude that "it's free, you are a meaningless statistic in our giant revenue stream so too bad" for the rest of their c…

But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers . They're product sold to advertisers. When I was spending a few million a year on AdWords, guess who had a direct line to Google, both via email and on the phone? I could talk to those guys whenever I wanted about campaigns, get advice on improving my keyword mix, budgeting strategies, any of that stuff. From this business' point of view, individuals ju…

"But, see, the trouble here is that these users aren't customers. They're product sold to advertisers."

The whole product/customer thing is a boring bit of sophistry usually used to slander Google.

Google's profitability secret is a very high revenue to employee ratio. When I bought a $600 Nexus One from Google and discovered a problem with fulfilment, the grand total of support Google supplied to me was an automated email response (that itself was a dead end -- no recourse or escalation), and a link to an FAQ.

That's just how Google operates. If they can make a cron job that eliminates the need to supply support for most customers, that's what they do. It is this way whether they benefit from you via your eyeballs, or from your wallet.

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#26

Post by lukes »

hannibalhorn wrote: post #3

I use Backupify to at least maintain a copy of everything with a second, separate service, just in case. It's free at my volumes, and I think a prudent idea for those of us with everything in "the cloud".

I just signed up. Thanks for reminding me they exist.

Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs

#28

Post by yankcrime »

eli wrote: post #21
kenjackson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a great service. Then I went to use it... it doesn't backup email?! I got my contacts and some random stuff that I didn't know I had (and don't care about). But where's my couple of gigs of email? Is there a different service for that?

There are scripts to do it via IMAP, but it takes a very long time and it's a bit of a pain to set up.

Not at all, it's utterly trivial with something like OfflineIMAP. Of course, depending on the size of your mailbox it'll take a little while for the first synchronisation but after that it's incremental.
Post reply on HN