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Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

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Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#401

Post by aunty_helen »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #234
TuringNYC wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a scare last year where Google supposedly gave me 30 days before they would shut off my Google account of 20yrs. Family photos, youtube videos, 20yrs of email, not to mention the treasure trove of personal documents on GDrive. It took two weeks to duplicate the content and back it up elsewhere. This is a paid tier Google account and I've yet to get an explanation on why this happened. It appears to be because o…

After reading so many posts like this, I decided to bite the bullet and start moving off-Google. Funny thing is, ProtonMail and Obsidian are much better than Gmail and Keep anyway. I'm still forced to use Google stuff here and there but I'm no longer dependant on them, and coincidentally I've been sleeping much better recently.

If you like markdown note taking apps and want to move completely from being dependent on a 3rd party, I would suggest Joplin.

Currently I'm syncing to a s3 bucket with e2e encryption but of course you could sync to a server you setup yourself including a basic windows box.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#402

Post by splonk »

kmeisthax wrote: post #59

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you…

The timeline makes me wonder if the personal account ban triggered an audit of their previous actions and found similar activity from when they were an employee.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#403

Post by ikiris »

CPLX wrote: post #324
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is much more profitable than your bank, and this is why. The reason tech companies sit all at the top of most valuable companies is essentially because they've automated away a ton of tasks which normally require hiring a lot of employees. The only way to fix this is to legally require it, because nobody's going to stop the profit train by themselves.

> Google is much more profitable than your bank, and this is why. That's not correct. Google is more profitable because it is a monopoly and routinely engages in illegal anti-competitive behavior. It's precisely because this is the case that it's able to have nonexistent customer service and stay in business.

Ahh yes, Google the bastion of unethical business practices in comparison to.... checks notes banks....

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#404

Post by rmbyrro »

kmeisthax wrote: post #59

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you…

Agree with everything.

Just clarifying that the concept of a limited liability company has nothing to do with this. It is about not having company liabilities (e.g. debt) reaching stockholders (e.g. banks seizing your personal car and house to pay for your business defaulted debt).

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#405

Post by TuringNYC »

anoojb wrote: post #382
TuringNYC wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a scare last year where Google supposedly gave me 30 days before they would shut off my Google account of 20yrs. Family photos, youtube videos, 20yrs of email, not to mention the treasure trove of personal documents on GDrive. It took two weeks to duplicate the content and back it up elsewhere. This is a paid tier Google account and I've yet to get an explanation on why this happened. It appears to be because o…

Is this an issue with all cloud providers? Or just large ones like Google, Amazon, Microsoft? I'm currently thinking of migrating from Google for productivity to Office 365. Wondering if I'm just re-branding the risk of my counterparty.

>>> Is this an issue with all cloud providers? Or just large ones like Google, Amazon, Microsoft? >>> I'm currently thinking of migrating from Google for productivity to Office 365. Wondering if I'm just re-branding the risk of my counterparty.

With AWS/Azure, you typically wouldnt have extensive personal data with them, so you dont have the risk of work and personal accounts colliding. I dont know anyone with personal emails/accounts/photos on the Microsoft ecosystem. With Amazon, whats the worst that can happen? You lose your connected Amazon purchasing account, doesnt seem terrible.

With Google you often have email/documents/photos with them. If you have an Android phone, you have almost everything with them.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#406

Post by bryans »

tempnow987 wrote: post #224
kmeisthax wrote: post #59

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you…

Google is dealing with a very real problem. There are bad actors, particularly internationally, who systematically and at scale try to subvert / cheat. This includes multiple accounts, and businesses that hire folks who try to cheat the system. Google almost certainly has statistics supporting the increased risk of working with developers / businesses that hire folks who break various rules. Certainly there are false…

Even if Google were paying support engineers $100/hr, in what universe is the average developer going to need 50 hours of support per year? In reality, it's at most averaging to 2 hours, and typically only in situations where Google messed up and should really be fixing it for free anyway, because it was their mistake. So, at most, it would be a labor cost of $300/yr including benefits and taxes, and more realistically that number is much closer to $100/yr.

And that's pretending they don't already make obscenely high profits per developer, and can absolutely afford to provide the necessary support for these situations, which again, are largely their mistakes to begin with.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#407

Post by ydant »

joemi wrote: post #367
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, I moved to Fastmail... and yeah, the hilarious thing is people remember moving from AOL to Gmail over a decade ago, and think Gmail is still so much better than everything else. Gmail is worst-in-class at this point. It's slow, it's bloated, it's bad at spam filtering compared to the alternatives. They've been riding on people remembering email before Gmail, but not really actually stayed competitive with…

I tried switching to Fastmail (from Gmail) 7-ish yrs ago, and I ended up switching back to Gmail specifically because the spam filtering was far worse with Fastmail. Is it Fastmail's spam filtering actually better now, or does it just seem that way when you start a new account because you're not getting much spam in general?

Another anecdote - I switched earlier this year (prompted because of the ending of my grandfathered Gapps account, but my experiences are largely with the "standard" Gmail account vs. Fastmail).

Spam filtering on Fastmail has been the same/better than Gmail was - including possibly fewer false-positives on the Fastmail side. Gmail was getting worse about those, both with mailing lists and individuals' emails.

Like many on HN, I'm diversifying my data/access risk across more providers. Too many wake-up calls recently about Google locking people out. There are still some services Google is compellingly better enough that I still use them (Android, Maps, YouTube, Google Sheets), but Email was too precious to tie up with them. I also wanted to finally kick myself into stoping using the `gmail.com` address at all anymore (maybe 20% of my emails before the migration).

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#408

Post by reincarnate0x14 »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #234
TuringNYC wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a scare last year where Google supposedly gave me 30 days before they would shut off my Google account of 20yrs. Family photos, youtube videos, 20yrs of email, not to mention the treasure trove of personal documents on GDrive. It took two weeks to duplicate the content and back it up elsewhere. This is a paid tier Google account and I've yet to get an explanation on why this happened. It appears to be because o…

After reading so many posts like this, I decided to bite the bullet and start moving off-Google. Funny thing is, ProtonMail and Obsidian are much better than Gmail and Keep anyway. I'm still forced to use Google stuff here and there but I'm no longer dependant on them, and coincidentally I've been sleeping much better recently.

Protonmail specifically seems to have strange problems with some old and busted email systems, ex: I've seen several government ministries in Taiwan (roc) that for some reason can not send email to protonmail or domains MXed there and no one has been able to explain it to me.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#409

Post by rexreed »

Macha wrote: post #322
skrtskrt wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the editor for Google Docs is the one really good thing I can't get elsewhere, but I don't do that much important stuff in it - just like planning vacations, etc. Once I'm done editing something, if I want to back it up I can just export it elsewhere

I've really pared down my Google usage with the end of grandfathered GAFYD accounts as the last straw, so down to Sheets, YouTube, and Android as my last google usage. YouTube has no alternative, Android has too much sunk cost, Sheets I'm probably going to go back to Syncthing + Libreoffice I guess. Office 365 is the equivalent alternative, but not sure I feel much better about MS's consumer products than I do about…

Just use Invidious links instead of going directly to YouTube (for example, yewtu.be for the same remainder of the URL) for viewing. If you're talking about hosting videos, use Vimeo. Even when people post youTube links I use the Invidious alternative to stop feeding Google data. Also invidious has embedded download capability on their various sites.
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