You are not the customer, you are the product? Unless you are an advertiser or using one if Alphabet's paid products. Customers get customer support.
It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#32If it's not acceptable to you, do not use their products.
What about their search engine?
I knew someone who worked as a "reputation hit man". I don't know what his rate is today, but back in the 2000s, he would, for $500, impersonate and defame a person all over the internet. Most of his clients were corporate executives trying to take out competitors for promotions. He may be out of that business, but it still exists and the practice is widespread.
Google knows about this problem, and in the EU, there is a right to be forgotten. If you're American, though, there could be "Google dirt" about you or about someone with the same first and last name, keeping you from getting decent jobs, and you probably wouldn't even know.
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it have to be in one place? There are dozens of cheap and fairly private email providers and you can run spreadsheets locally or self-host an Etherpad.
If you need to ask this you’re not understanding the business need Google is providing me.
No one can understand something you don't say.
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#34You are not the customer, you are the product? Unless you are an advertiser or using one if Alphabet's paid products. Customers get customer support.
this :)
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#35If it's not acceptable to you, do not use their products.
What about their search engine? I knew someone who worked as a "reputation hit man". I don't know what his rate is today, but back in the 2000s, he would, for $500, impersonate and defame a person all over the internet. Most of his clients were corporate executives trying to take out competitors for promotions. He may be out of that business, but it still exists and the practice is widespread. Google knows about this…
That's why I beat the reputation hitmen to the punch and assassinate my own character on the Internet. Nobody gets to make an ass of me except for me :)
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#36If it's not acceptable to you, do not use their products.
What about their search engine? I knew someone who worked as a "reputation hit man". I don't know what his rate is today, but back in the 2000s, he would, for $500, impersonate and defame a person all over the internet. Most of his clients were corporate executives trying to take out competitors for promotions. He may be out of that business, but it still exists and the practice is widespread. Google knows about this…
The US has defamation laws that you might be able to leverage.
This seems to only be very tangentially related to google, what about other search engines or the websites that host the content?
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#37To paraphrase a classic Lily Tomlin punchline: > "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Tech Company." This is why unregulated industries and monopolies are bad.
On the contrary, the phone company (to which the actual quote refers to) was a government-instituted monopoly and far from an unregulated industry.
And Bell System customer and repair service was pretty good when they were the only game in town.
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#381) There have been Googlers who have posted on HN about their customer service, and the ones that have posted seem to think their algorithms are good enough and don't really make the connection that every false positive is a real human or business that might lose a business or worse when they can't access their data. My interpretation of this is that either they're fine with being evil, or Google's average employees…
> I'm a little sympathetic to Google here, because there's no way that they can offer real customer service to the entire Internet. I run some small businesses and get dumb phone calls all of the time from confused people thinking that my random shop has anything to do with their phone plan or email issues or a problem with their cable bill or anything else under the sun because they ended up at my store after puttin…
> The fact that you give something away at no charge (but actually make money or even if you don't make money) is not a reason you can then walk away and not have any responsibility at all for anything and everything. (Or shouldn't be).
I'm very sympathetic to OP's situation, I have also lost an account with years of irreplaceable emails to Google's finicky algorithms. But this right here is a slippery slope I would never wish for. Offering a free product should absolutely not entitle any random user to any kind of support. I should be able to release a product (whether open-source, free, or paid) and decide for myself and my business the level of support I want to provide, without an obligation to respond to everyone, or maintain it forever.
It really sucks that Google's business plan is totally cool with leaving some of us behind, but I'd rather take the risk that comes with the territory rather than not see these products get created in the first place due to onerous obligations.
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it have to be in one place? There are dozens of cheap and fairly private email providers and you can run spreadsheets locally or self-host an Etherpad.
If you need to ask this you’re not understanding the business need Google is providing me.
You're making a choice to prioritize whatever unsaid things Google is giving you without support over a company (or set of companies) who will give you something different but with support. That's totally fine, so long as realize that that's the choice that you're making.
Re: It's not acceptable that Google does not offer support to users
#401) There have been Googlers who have posted on HN about their customer service, and the ones that have posted seem to think their algorithms are good enough and don't really make the connection that every false positive is a real human or business that might lose a business or worse when they can't access their data. My interpretation of this is that either they're fine with being evil, or Google's average employees…
>Google's average employees aren't quite as smart as public perception portrays.
Intelligence is a funny thing. People can be the world’s foremost expert in whatever the heck, don’t matter for my point, and be utterly incompetent in every other area of their life if someone else is picking up for them. Think of career scientists giving humiliating public speeches for the first time since high school (industry conferences notwithstanding). That’s not their specialty and they have no reason to be talented at public speaking if they’re not trained in public relations and speaking. Don’t expect a Googler to be able to tie their shoes, drive a car, navigate public transportation or experience empathy just because they get high scores in leetcode. They’re not dependent skills and assuming they are is a sure sign of insufficient critical thought.
As far as your solution goes, hard pass. Providing support should be required by law. If you run a service that people depend on for any of the requirements of modern life then you should provide real live human support 24/7/365 or be liable for treble damages and equal fines for all harm this corner cutting costs. If my power goes out my electric company contacts me and tells me how they’re responding before I can even dig out their number. Google is equally important and the sooner people accept the new reality these technocrats have created for us the better off we’ll all be.