Just forward everything to a comcast or ISP email address and make that forward to a yahoo address so you have multiple backups.
Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
41–50 of 258 posts
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#42If you do anything remotely important via email, you should own you own domain name, and pay for a hosted email solution. I can suggest tuffmail. They are awesome and affordable.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 the…
There's less conflict between people and profits than you might think.
First, I share your idealism. Being good to people, and humanity as a whole, is the most important thing we can do in our brief existence.
What's happened, though, is that perverse incentives that reward short-term thinking at the expense of long-term results have become the norm in large businesses.
Ship product X before it's ready because the Street wants to see some action before the end of the quarter – even though in an unfinished state, you'll destroy the product's reputation. (most people in Tablet land)
Fire an experienced sales force because they are expensive. The money saved will look great in our financial reporting – even though the resulting drop in customer service will gut our profitability for years to come. (Home Depot, Circuit City)
Adopt rigid policies around customer service. Don't empower front-line people to make things right. That might cost money – even though the lost goodwill will mean that customers will abandon the business and flock to better alternatives. (most retail chains, airlines)
But the good news is that there are companies who make a lot of money just by kind of being nice to people, creating a fair balance of profit for the company and value for the customer.
Zappos spends a shitload of money on phone support. It's a marketing expense. So everyone loves shopping at Zappos after awhile.
Amazon will disable their Prime $3.99 one-click shipping button if they've noticed that the free option has the same delivery estimate. So you can always feel safe shopping there.
Apple Stores are pretty flexible with return/exchange/warranty rules. Be polite, explain what you need, they'll often bend policy or waive repair fees. From a product perspective, Apple sits on products for years and kills them if they can't deliver a minimum level of user experience quality. So when they launch something new, they have lines out the door with people desperate to buy.
Whole Foods empowers their store managers to do the right thing – whatever that looks like for a given situation or market. So if the power goes out in the middle of a busy day, everyone goes home with free food so they can get on with life.
So as long as you're capable of seeing past the next three weeks, you can make money and be good to people. Which is what you need if you want to pay your employees' rent. Corporations are capable of doing a lot of good. But they've been hijacked by unimaginative, unproductive Wall Street morons who would kill a school bus full of children if it meant a higher return on the next five minutes of trading.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
I fail to see how you are addressing the argument made in the previous post. Google is giving you a service for free because they are selling data about you for money. In other words if you aren't paying for the product you are the product. How does that have anything to do with sophistry?
Sophistry : "a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning."
Google makes money because they have users, in the same way that a television network makes money because they have viewers. Both are entirely reliant upon their user base, and will desperately trying to optimize and maximize that user base.
If the GP's point was "there is a very low profit / user, and a limited impact by irate customers (at least those who don't shout from the rooftops)" then they are making an accurate statement, and it's actually what I supported -- Google doesn't care whether you're on a "free" or pay program, they'll still try to avoid talking to you.
The bit about products and customers is just completely unnecessary, again, sophistry. Google's product is a mail system and a search engine and a social product, and sometimes users pay for it (I use Apps for Domains), and sometimes advertisers pay for it. Cutifying that into comforting slogans isn't helpful.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
> 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. You begin with what seems like disagreement, then prove my point. A $600 device to be exposed to Google's mobile ads? Here's an email. A few million dollars a year in ad spend? Here's a whole department of new friends. Solving problems with AdWords can be done algorithmica…
So if we discard the polarizing language about customers and products, we get to your point being that the more profitable you are as a customer, the more attention you get?
I don't think that is terribly challenging viewpoint.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sympathize with your idealistic sort of thinking but it is unreasonable. Corporations (which is what Google is) are responsible to shareholders. The purpose of a corporation by definition is to maximize the bottom line for the shareholder. It has nothing to do with being good to people. The only way that this guy's problem will get solved is if enough people catch wind of his situation that it affects the fairly po…
I believe the idea of "publicly-held companies" is a net negative for humanity. It encourages immoral behavior. Obviously my thoughts are unreasonable. I wish the world were unreasonable. Because then people might empathize with each other to an unreasonable degree, resulting in far less grief and hate within our microscopic timeline of our universe.
What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions? Money.
It is not the pubicly-held companies. It is the power of money to control, persuade, influence, or even empower.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is true that money doesn't buy happiness but even truer that not having money can cause unhappiness via stress among other things.
The problem is what people who have money decide to do with it and how they choose to influence the larger whole. Many of the people who have put their entire intellect towards making money, have desired to do so for the wrong reasons and therefore use it in a net negative way as you have put it.
I guess what I am saying, is that it falls on the individual to make the right decision, and not corporations, governments or societies as a whole.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#47FWIW, Brett Slatkin at Google reached out via Google+ to try and help this guy. Looks like they made the connect: https://plus.google.com/u/0/116969159384245484847/posts/Z1UH...
Also Vic Gundotra: http://twitter.com/#!/vicgundotra/status/94184809936601090
His reply gives me the shivers, partly because I'm afraid I won't be able (if I were ever to be locked out) to generate enough attention to warrant a response by Vic himself. But mostly because of the incredibly reassuring way he chose to word his response:
"You bet on Google. We owe you better. I'm investigating."
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#48Google+ 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?
I checked out google takeout - but it only lets me backup the services I don't care about. Google for imapgrab. It's a tiny python program and it's as simple as can get.
Reading this link gave me the push I needed to finally backup my gmail. I've been worried about the [probably very low] risk of Google deciding to close my account, but I'm going to take it into my own hands now, and start using Gmail as my reader only.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#49I think there's an important lesson here that you can take home right now: If your primary email is an @gmail.com address, you have your head firmly in the lion's mouth.
You can backup your data. You can have fallback tools and services. You cannot backup your identity. And if that identity is controlled by Google, you are tying your online existence for the duration to the foibles of a publically traded company with a shitty track record of customer support.
Tell me with a straight face that you know Google won't mess you around like this - not just now, but for the next decade. Hell, tell me you know your account won't be algorithmically disabled tomorrow. If your last name isn't Gundotra, I don't think you can. Why, then, are you taking that risk when the cost is so small?
.com domains retail for about $10/year, Google Apps Free Edition is here: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html - you can keep the services you like while retaining control of your email address.
Disclaimer: I have an @gmail.com address that I'm suddenly realising is a sword over my head.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#50I think there's an important lesson here that you can take home right now: If your primary email is an @gmail.com address, you have your head firmly in the lion's mouth. You can backup your data. You can have fallback tools and services. You cannot backup your identity. And if that identity is controlled by Google, you are tying your online existence for the duration to the foibles of a publically traded company with…
How does this solve said issue? Using Google Apps means the big G still controls all your data.