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

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

#51

Post by palish »

danilocampos wrote: post #34
hn_decay wrote: post #25

Earlier 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…

You forgot "And that's an immoral way to operate. As individuals, we should try very hard to discourage that mentality. But that's the way the world operates at this time."

Personally, I've given up hope that the world will ever be different. But if there is any hope, it will take the form of: "We will no longer tolerate your impersonal policies and rationalizations". So we should try to speak out against it.

But yeah. People are irrational cows that throw money at anything shiny. So that won't happen, and the world won't change.

Moo.

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

#52

Post by mikle »

sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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…

This made me concerned. I have my own domain which indeed uses Google Apps, but I just forward all my mails from there to my @gmail.com account. This needs to switch.

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

#53

Post by caseysoftware »

palish wrote: post #23
danilocampos wrote: post #13

Earlier 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…

Even in Star Trek with the ability to replicate nearly anything, they had to introduce money.. gold pressed latinum.

/me puts his geek away

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

#54

Post by tesseract »

sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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…

I have Google Apps Free for my personal domain and I am considering moving to the paid one, just to be able to phone them if anything ever goes wrong. (The Android remote-wipe feature that comes with it might be worthwhile too, just-in-case.)

I also primarily use an IMAP client which saves a local copy of all my email, so although the "identity" issues (and non-email data) bother me a bit, I do have at all times essentially a backup of all my mail.

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

#55

Post by maqr »

mikle wrote: post #52
sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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…

This made me concerned. I have my own domain which indeed uses Google Apps, but I just forward all my mails from there to my @gmail.com account. This needs to switch.

I'm trying to avoid doing precisely that, but I want into Google+... I wish they would just add support for Apps domains.

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

#56

Post by mrcharles »

sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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…

The problem with having your own domain for email is the communication factor. When I tell someone my email is charles.lastname@gmail.com, there's no miscommunication. Worst case I have to spell out my last name, but generally if someone's asking for email they already have my last name.

If you buy a domain, nowadays, you have few options with respect to getting an email that sounds legit, mature, and isn't long and/or uses easily misspelled words.

I have a bunch of domains, but none of them are particularly appropriate for an email address I would verbally communicate to someone. bluh.org is my main domain, but when you say 'bluh' out loud to someone, you inevitably have to spell it. I once owned thereisnocharles.com, which was a goofy thing and I used that as my main email address before gmail came along. But it's long, and it doesn't sound professional at all.

I guess we could all just use something like gmail as a simple forwarder service to our owned email addresses, but even then, it's not a foolproof solution.

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

#57

Post by mikle »

yuvadam wrote: post #50
sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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.

Data you can download, identity is hard to change.

For example: I can download all my mail from gmail (using POP or IMAP) regularly. If I lose the account I still have my mails. I can't change the mail amazon (or whatever other site) knows about unless I have access to my gmail account (I realize you can probably talk to their customer support but it doesn't scale well at all. I have about 120 different logins using my @gmail.com address...).

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

#58

Post by mrcharles »

mrcharles wrote: post #56
sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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…

The problem with having your own domain for email is the communication factor. When I tell someone my email is charles.lastname@gmail.com, there's no miscommunication. Worst case I have to spell out my last name, but generally if someone's asking for email they already have my last name. If you buy a domain, nowadays, you have few options with respect to getting an email that sounds legit, mature, and isn't long and/…

Also, no, it's not a matrix reference, it's a ghostbusters reference.

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

#59

Post by mikle »

mrcharles wrote: post #56
sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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…

The problem with having your own domain for email is the communication factor. When I tell someone my email is charles.lastname@gmail.com, there's no miscommunication. Worst case I have to spell out my last name, but generally if someone's asking for email they already have my last name. If you buy a domain, nowadays, you have few options with respect to getting an email that sounds legit, mature, and isn't long and/…

i@yourname.com

Solves the problem you raised.

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

#60

Post by mike-cardwell »

yuvadam wrote: post #50
sgentle wrote: post #49

I 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.

He was talking about identity, not data. If google closes your account and you control your identity, you can take it elsewhere. If google controls both your identity and your data and then closes your account, you're screwed.
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