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How likely is losing a Google account?

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Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#231

Post by morpheos137 »

c22 wrote: post #151
efsavage wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, companies try to double-dip and serve multiple masters. See: the security and privacy mess in smart TVs. Last I checked, LG wasn't giving their TVs away. This is true, and you transition from customer to eyeballs once you take delivery of the product, but it is also tempered by the fact that they would like to sell you your next TV as well.

Google has the same incentive to consider users. If your eyeballs go away they have no recourse for tomorrow. This is no doubt why they give their services away. If they thought they could achieve similar market share while also charging you they certainly would. (And they do whenever they see the chance.)

Google certainly could charge a very small fee for existing gmail, youtube, etc, accounts and make a bunch of money.

In fact there is a pretty strong argument that they are leaving money on the table by not doing so.

Imagine you like your gmail and you have had it for the past decade. If Google charges only $1 per year across say a billion users that is a billion dollars.

Even if they lose some users at the margin it may makes sense...

According to wikipedia gmail had 1.5 billion active users in 2019.

As internet services mature and stop growing exponentially it makes sense to charge for them.

Yes it is true that some might switch but what makes more sense from the perspective of most users?

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#232

Post by thatjoeoverthr »

remus wrote: post #121
GeekyBear wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can reach a human" is a huge security vuln Google's algorithms make entirely too many errors. "I can't get my account back unless a viral account of my problem makes the front page of HN" is an unacceptable risk.

I'm not sure how you can make that judgement without extra context (that is almost certainly tightly held within google). For example, what actually is the error rate? How does that compare to improper access that is successfully prevented? Obviously any real person losing access to their account is a rubbish experience for that person, but an error rate of 0% is not possible with any system (including those with ple…

One can easily make that judgment. The absence of extra context is a good reason to make that judgment. Google has a reputation for closing accounts and refusing to communicate. Google does not contest this reputation. They give no numbers and share no rate. "What's the acceptable error rate?" isn't an interesting question if you have no numbers. We do, however, have other companies and service providers.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#233

Post by bookofjoe »

layer8 wrote: post #184
bookofjoe wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the 99+% of us who aren't computer savvy, "using your own domain with a well-reputed registrar..." is as achievable as suddenly speaking Sanskrit. Think outside the echo chamber.

While my recommendation was targeting the HN crowd, where I assume some level of computer savviness, buying a domain doesn’t require technical expertise. Wiring it up with an email provider may require some, although providers often provide good instructions, and, more pertinently, you can also buy this as a service, or have a friend or family member take care of it. The important part is that you own the domain. I f…

>... buying a domain doesn’t require technical expertise.

I respectfully disagree. I succeeded in buying my own domain but it was a VERY painful, confusing, and disagreeable experience, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone who's not amongst the HN techie crowd.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#234

Post by slantyyz »

lolinder wrote: post #112
balboah wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used fastmail (and proton) for a year or two. Had to go back to google because there’s just too much spam otherwise

I've been on Fastmail for several years and I've had no spam in my inbox at all. Not a single email. That's a better track record than Gmail for me.

I've been on Fastmail for almost a year, and I get spam/obvious phishing attempts in my inbox. Compared to my experience with GMail before switching to Fastmail, I found Gmail to be noticeably better at spotting and filtering both spam and phishing emails.

Having said that, I'm still not going back to Gmail.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#235

Post by torton »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #196
jasmer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is inherently more secure than one that sells your eyeballs to advertisers in exchange for giving you free stuff. " Not necessarily, and in fact this case I would disagree. I trust Google's security 10x more than that of FastMail. The 'advertising company' reaps in billions of $ with which they can get all sorts of good engineers for 0-day research, exploits, updates. They have a lot more of a reputation to defend.…

> I trust Google's security 10x more than that of FastMail. I trust Google security to protect Google, not me. For example by blocking my account. > They have a lot more of a reputation to defend. Actually no, if Fastmail pulled the shit that Google does, they'd be out of business.

> I trust Google security to protect Google, not me. For example by blocking my account.

Any company will protect itself first. As they say in the VPN world, "nobody here is going to jail for your $5/month".

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#236

Post by [deleted] »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #159
guptaneil wrote: post #13

It's true that every service has to deal with the same policy and lockout problems, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that the risk is the same. I pay for FastMail because 1. if something goes wrong, I can reach a human without needing to write a viral blog post first. Other services pay for a customer service department. 2. I trust FastMail more to not shut down their product because they got bored. Sure Gmail…

I can't find any information on what happens if you stop paying for a Fastmail account. 1Password for example freezes your account in read-only mode. It's documented that Fastmail will re-use addresses for free trials and when a user requests to cancel [1]. It isn't clear what would happen if for some reason your card expired, they stopped accepting it [2], or your bank messed up and blocked the transaction [3]. To m…

[deleted]

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#237

Post by jmull »

jsnell wrote: post #93
jmull wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. I had Google hosting my family's email for a long time (I had one of those grandfathered free custom domain setups). It wasn't bad and it was free (!), but: - Google threatened to cut me off. - Wife's account needed attention to keep it under the disk space quotas. - Google had creepy marketing based on private email content (making you worry about what else they are doing with my private email content). - It was…

> Google had creepy marketing based on private email content (making you worry about what else they are doing with my private email content As far as I know, email content was never used for ad targeting on any iteration of Workspace/Gsuite/Google Apps for Your Domain/etc. (And it hasn't been used for consumer gmail for many years either.)

How would you know though?

Not that the details of how they use a specific information stream are all that important (if they aren't using one it's just because they've got something else better). The fundamental problem is that their interests are fairly heavily misaligned with mine. They want to make money by effectively mining my information and I don't like that and find it creepy.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#238

Post by JohnFen »

edent wrote: post #64
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but there is not process or person that has ever existed that has been infallible, therefore you are arguing that Google scale does not work?

That's correct. Google boasts that it doesn't do customer service because it can't scale to meet the demands of their user base. That can only work if their systems and processes never cause a user to have to go further than an FAQ page or community support. Given that Google are fallible, you end up in a situation where users' have a poor experience and cannot contact someone to resolve it.

> Google boasts that it doesn't do customer service because it can't scale to meet the demands of their user base.

Which is a huge red flag, and a fantastic reason to avoid relying on any Google service.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#239

Post by WorldMaker »

rektide wrote: post #157
edent wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. Google boasts that it doesn't do customer service because it can't scale to meet the demands of their user base. That can only work if their systems and processes never cause a user to have to go further than an FAQ page or community support. Given that Google are fallible, you end up in a situation where users' have a poor experience and cannot contact someone to resolve it.

Technosocietal Mechanization is a term I might float here. I'm in a weird spot. I find myself surprised at how actively I defend these company's right to speech. Section 230 still seems like the bedrock that made it possible to have everyday people put words online to me, and I can't imagine renegotiating a way to preserve that while heaping liability onto those who offer online services. Yet these completely mechani…

One option is "the opposite of tort reform". Our legal system has been ratcheted one way that's a bit more anti-consumer, we could ratchet it back the other way: increase legally allowable civil damages again, allow more consumer protections against arbitration clauses in EULAs and Terms of Service agreements, stop limiting individual civil court cases in class action agreements, limit the reasons that class action lawsuits right now are the only lawsuits that major corporations are listening to, etc.

In theory, extremely mechanized companies could have to either fix their customer support operations or face an endless stream of lawsuits. You can let the market (again) decide whether they want to spend more money on customer service labor or lawyer labor.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#240

Post by bouke »

kfarr wrote: post #17

Overall good analysis but this one quote is kinda crazy if you think about it "I put a little effort into avoiding grey areas (not filing chargebacks to Google, not taking pictures of my kids in the bath) but otherwise don't worry about this."

Right!? Not being allowed to take pictures of your own kids as you might anger your land lord as they'll evict you without warning and burn all your stuff.
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