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Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

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Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#51

Post by yew »

danilocampos wrote: post #36
jodrellblank wrote: post #27

they've chosen to act apparently without ever considering how their actions might affect the people who use and rely on their services. Hyperbolic nonsense. Their consideration for multicultural, international, legal, technical, practical, and end user issues under time and effort constraints doesn't come out exactly the way you wanted it to under one edge case that you happen to hit therefore they "haven't ever cons…

> outside the normal patterns of a huge system Can you expand a bit on how a sentient human being, wishing to communicate with other sentient human beings, is outside the normal patterns of a communications system?

Google isn't just a communication system, though. They're a very large corporation involved in numerous enterprises that often interfere with one another, and their actions are further modified by an even larger legal system that only imperfectly represents the collective will of its constituents.

Decisions are often (indeed, perhaps mostly) made without any consideration of individual people (even the people making the decisions aren't always entirely conscious of what they're doing). I don't believe that's a necessity, but a lot of people are pretty comfortable with it and it mostly approximates working. This sort of thing shouldn't come as a terrible surprise.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#52

Post by rubidium »

danilocampos wrote: post #42
Kylekramer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dear Sophie" pretty clearly implies it isn't Sophie's account to me. When you write an letter (especially one that hasn't been sent yet as the commercial implies), you are the owner of the letter, right? To cite the Bible, it is Paul's letters to the Corinthians, not the Corinthians' letters from Paul.

Leaving aside my glee that we must reach into mythology (edited, thanks rubidium) to help Google's case, any letter that begins "Dear Sophie" sounds like it's a letter... to Sophie. And while she might not be able to read it right now, my initial guess as to why would be that infants don't have great reading comprehension, not that Google can't find an algorithm to get around COPPA.

Entirely OT, but you did bring it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age. It would be iron age. And no historian disputes that an actual letter was written to Corinthians (and most are certain on Paul), so that takes out the mythology. At best, you can call it "Iron Age history of uncertain veracity". Sorry that it doesn't have quite the same demeaning effect.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#53

Post by Kylekramer »

danilocampos wrote: post #42
Kylekramer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dear Sophie" pretty clearly implies it isn't Sophie's account to me. When you write an letter (especially one that hasn't been sent yet as the commercial implies), you are the owner of the letter, right? To cite the Bible, it is Paul's letters to the Corinthians, not the Corinthians' letters from Paul.

Leaving aside my glee that we must reach into mythology (edited, thanks rubidium) to help Google's case, any letter that begins "Dear Sophie" sounds like it's a letter... to Sophie. And while she might not be able to read it right now, my initial guess as to why would be that infants don't have great reading comprehension, not that Google can't find an algorithm to get around COPPA.

Not sure what the age of the reference has to do with anything, but ok, here is a modern one. I write a poem, and send it to my girlfriend via email. Who is the author of the poem? I really don't get how intended recipient = account owner.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#55

Post by freiheit »

dotBen wrote: post #39
1010011010 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COPPA is fucking stupid legislation, but Google should at least provide a "parental consent" mechanism.

A parent can't 'over-rule' a federal law. "Hey Mr Food-N-Liquor owner, I give you consent for you to sell my 18 year old alcohol" etc

Except, of course, that COPPA has a parental consent provision. The problem is the burden of verifiability.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#56

Post by tristanperry »

A pretty bad story - not that I'm surprised though. Google have never been good at customer service (obviously with the web so large and most of Google being free, you can't expect much, but what is 'offered' is usually sub-par, even for paid products).

On the plus side, this is #1 on Hacker News meaning Matt Cutts should reply any second and internally flag this up inside Google.

One of the comments on the Google+ entry also stuck out:

"The same happened to me. It also means my daughter can't log into her Chromebook!"

If that's true that's pretty awful. It does bring up a good point though - if Google close your account (rightly or wrongly), it does make owning a Chromebook somewhat useless.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#57

Post by danilocampos »

rubidium wrote: post #52
danilocampos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside my glee that we must reach into mythology (edited, thanks rubidium) to help Google's case, any letter that begins "Dear Sophie" sounds like it's a letter... to Sophie. And while she might not be able to read it right now, my initial guess as to why would be that infants don't have great reading comprehension, not that Google can't find an algorithm to get around COPPA.

Entirely OT, but you did bring it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age . It would be iron age. And no historian disputes that an actual letter was written to Corinthians (and most are certain on Paul), so that takes out the mythology. At best, you can call it "Iron Age history of uncertain veracity". Sorry that it doesn't have quite the same demeaning effect.

Touché! Though the contents of said communiques do, indeed, form mythology.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#58

Post by csmt »

danilocampos wrote: post #18

B-b-but Google made this fancy video advertisement about how I can give my infant daughter a Gmail account and write to her as she grows up! Does it only work if she never uses it? You've gotta wait until you can hold a bat mitzvah to hand it off to her? This kind of chicanery is why I can only chuckle when Google announces new initiatives that require significant customer service, like selling telephones or providin…

This is absurd. Instead of not collecting data for children Google is blocking access to children. I am seriously looking for alternatives to Gmail. Any suggestions? I don't want my email account hooked up to a social network and advertising machinery.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#59

Post by danilocampos »

Kylekramer wrote: post #53
danilocampos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside my glee that we must reach into mythology (edited, thanks rubidium) to help Google's case, any letter that begins "Dear Sophie" sounds like it's a letter... to Sophie. And while she might not be able to read it right now, my initial guess as to why would be that infants don't have great reading comprehension, not that Google can't find an algorithm to get around COPPA.

Not sure what the age of the reference has to do with anything, but ok, here is a modern one. I write a poem, and send it to my girlfriend via email. Who is the author of the poem? I really don't get how intended recipient = account owner.

> I really don't get how intended recipient = account owner.

You can't send an email to someone who doesn't own an email account.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#60

Post by sliverstorm »

TillE wrote: post #50
ck2 wrote: post #32

So - when was the last time everyone reading this backed up their gmail? Take the next 5 minutes to install thunderbird (you'll be impressed if you have not seen it in years) and enter the IMAP settings for google and download everything in the background while you work. When your account gets hacked and you lose everything, you'll appreciate the backup.

That should be SOP in any case. Just takes a few clicks to make Thunderbird sync everything from IMAP (Account Settings -> Synchronization & Storage).

I prefer POP3. Then just mix in Dropbox and local backups, and my email is pretty darn safe.
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