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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.

#131

Post by ww520 »

csmt wrote: post #58
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.

But since Google can't collect data to target ad to the children, Google doesn't make any money from them. Google don't need children that can't pay money. Case closed.

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

#132

Post by cookiecaper »

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.

For the record Thunderbird's IMAP sync is not a reliable backup mechanism by itself. If many emails are deleted from your account, Thunderbird will sync (and delete your files locally) before you have the opportunity to copy them off somewhere safe. I know this from deleting all my mails off my gmail account (to make an encrypted archive) and trying to use TB as a reliable storage method -- since I had just taken a backup of my TB directory I didn't lose any mail, but it should be emphasized that TB with IMAP sync is not a backup mechanism.

However, there are some great TB extensions that will allow you to export your mail into a reasonable, portable format every so often. I use ImportExportTools to export my mailbox to an mbox file and store that file securely. I can use this file to reimport to Thunderbird or any other mail client, or even to read some mail directly. :)

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

#133

Post by mpclark »

eli wrote: post #63
csmt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a bit more complex than that. In order to comply, Google would need to verify that you are a parent/guardian and that you are giving permission for your child to join. Faxing of identity documents would likely be involved. Google's approach is heavy handed, but it's a really bad law.

What we need is for big, well funded companies to somehow use their influence to get bad laws changed...

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

#134

Post by Matt_Cutts »

tristanperry wrote: post #56

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+ e…

COPPA is pretty far afield from my area of expertise. I'm more than happy to encourage people back at the plex to talk about the situation with COPPA and our services though.

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

#135

Post by magicalist »

CamperBob wrote: post #123
magicalist wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Everyone plays the balance game. You can have the best customer service in the world, but my daughter is still going to cry if your moving company breaks her stuff, or your store sells us tainted dog food, or your family-run email service writes the w…

It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Except we're not their customers.

You can substitute "user", but as william42 pointed out, the distinction means little. Feel free to bring up to anyone here relying on VC that their users aren't their customers, and be amazed once again at how little insight that provides.

If you want to contribute some signal instead of noise, you could say they have two sets of customers with sometimes opposed motivations. But that isn't uncommon (and if it isn't another set of customers, it's your suppliers or the hours in the day or something else). As I said, everyone plays the balance game.

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

#136

Post by whiletruefork »

To my knowledge complying with COPPA is a difficult and tedious process. Common sense does not apply, and in fact, in my understanding, can often put you in violation of the law (for example: stating that you are going to remove someones access for being underage , because then they can reasonably understand that lying is in their best interest).

Blame your own government, not Google.

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

#137

Post by miles_matthias »

joelmichael wrote: post #65
miles_matthias wrote: post #43

Isn't this an old story? I feel like I read this exact story a few months ago.

I felt the same way. Turns out there was a story in July with an almost identical title, but they seem to be different occurrences. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2725983

Ah good catch. Thanks.

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

#138

Post by CamperBob »

magicalist wrote: post #135
CamperBob wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Except we're not their customers.

You can substitute "user", but as william42 pointed out, the distinction means little. Feel free to bring up to anyone here relying on VC that their users aren't their customers, and be amazed once again at how little insight that provides. If you want to contribute some signal instead of noise, you could say they have two sets of customers with sometimes opposed motivations. But that isn't uncommon (and if it isn't…

The distinction is very important: a customer is someone who pays you money.

To Google and Facebook, users are just parameters to be optimized.

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

#139

Post by danilocampos »

CamperBob wrote: post #138
magicalist wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can substitute "user", but as william42 pointed out, the distinction means little. Feel free to bring up to anyone here relying on VC that their users aren't their customers, and be amazed once again at how little insight that provides. If you want to contribute some signal instead of noise, you could say they have two sets of customers with sometimes opposed motivations. But that isn't uncommon (and if it isn't…

The distinction is very important: a customer is someone who pays you money. To Google and Facebook, users are just parameters to be optimized.

Concur: To lose a customer is to lose some chunk of revenue. To lose a user is to lose some chunk of page views to be sold. A very important distinction. You can offset shed users by adjusting the product to generate more page views, as publishers well know. Lose too many customers, though, and that's a lot of money that's simply not hitting your pocket anymore.

With that in mind, I'm pretty sure Netflix would not email me asking to know about the quality of a given streamed movie if I were merely a user.

And the way I know that is that YouTube has never once checked in on me to see how my streaming experience went.

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

#140

Post by danilocampos »

william42 wrote: post #128
CamperBob wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing. Except we're not their customers.

Yeah, but if we leave, then the advertisers(their "real customers") will too, so it works out the same.

It really doesn't. Advertisers have committed budgets and have switching costs that are often much, much higher than those of end users. It would take a sustained, double-digit-percentage loss of users to impact Google's bottom line.

One user fucked over out of 1,000, even if they never return, is pretty easy to paper over. Which is why there's no phone number a user can call if they're in trouble. They don't really matter, so it's not worth the cost to address their issue.

AdWords advertisers, on the other hand, they can get a human on the phone whenever they want. Because if they have an issue, it's honest-to-god cash money that stops flowing into Google's coffers.

They're the real customers.

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