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…
Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
121–130 of 258 posts
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FWIW Not much. They're only doing damage control. I wonder whether Matt Cutts is on holiday or something, by the way..
I talked to the person with this complaint, then looked into it myself. The account was suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service. After digging into the situation, my personal opinion is that Google took appropriate action. I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 St…
But our capital markets are screwed up, and corporate governance laws are a mess, leading to less accountability and mismatched incentives.
http://www.icahnreport.com/report/2008/06/corporate-democ.ht...
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#124I wonder why google lets that happen. They don't have blog monitoring or something? Or are they too arrogant to fix a problem even when it's clearly there (for one person, anyway). Or is it that you just can't find the one person responsible and empowered with the ability to fix? Everyone have bugs (another use for blog monitoring), but this one seems pretty loud. Same for facebook.
These companies use highly automated services, if the approach feels inhumane then you are noticing the fact that it is inhumane.
Its not a malicious act for these companies to do this, its a by product of a set up circumstances that are designed to trigger a response to catch people abusing the product.
Naturally a person from time to time will trigger the automated response and appear to use as a cruelly treated victim, but what you don't see is the thousands of other people that systems like this catch. To them the system works extremely well, innocent victims here and there included.
Why it appears to suck is what is mentioned above, users are not customers, you are a product being sold. Hence they want to spend the bare minimum on user support, they want to maximsie the profit per product. On a personal level they have no interest in you.
Like a farmer to cattle. You have to treat the cattle well enough so you have sell it, but the farmer has no personal attachment to a cow as such (pets aside), they are just a product. To keep a cow healthy sometimes you have to spend some many on vet services, but you don't bring in the vet to inspect every cow, thats bad business.
Google has great customer support by the way. If you want to spend large sums of money they will send a man to company to discuss exactly how you spend it.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#125I 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/…
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FWIW Not much. They're only doing damage control. I wonder whether Matt Cutts is on holiday or something, by the way..
I talked to the person with this complaint, then looked into it myself. The account was suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service. After digging into the situation, my personal opinion is that Google took appropriate action. I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail.
Think about what you could do with a tiny bit of programming knowledge and keyword knowledge to make money using these service. Then try it and get banned. Cutts works all day to ban guys like this. He's less webspam hall monitor than he is the "Ad Sheriff". The internet, and Google, is the Wild Wild West. The only thing stopping people from scraping cash from Google and other ad networks are people like him. And their algos of course.
Sorry your account got banned bro. You just got tased by the cops. Next time don't ask questions about Skull and Bones and deliver good content instead, as Cutts always says.
/opinion
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 yea…
Personally, I feel this is a simple matter of personal responsibility. It's free, so you can't expect support. If you're not okay with that, pay someone and ask them for guarantees.
¹ Yes, I know there are other costs, but I don't think their value to Google covers anything similar to real support.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
They provide IMAP and POP to let you download your email.
IMAP is horribly unreliable. POP discards information. IMAP also discards information - I don't just want my email, I want my tagged email.
If you want to keep the tags, take a look at heliotrope[1], a personal email server with tag support that can sync Gmail accounts.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is this different from using Google Apps for your domain? You're simply giving your email hosting to tuffmail as opposed to google.
When the host burns you, just point your DNS to a new host and the emails stop bouncing in hours.
Re: Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User's Digital Life, Shrugs
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FWIW Not much. They're only doing damage control. I wonder whether Matt Cutts is on holiday or something, by the way..
I talked to the person with this complaint, then looked into it myself. The account was suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service. After digging into the situation, my personal opinion is that Google took appropriate action. I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail.