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Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

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Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#51

Post by daenney »

Ayesh wrote: post #5

This is one of those reasons why I prefer prepaid cloud services. There are not many providers in this field (Vultr, Digital Ocean, etc). You can generally estimate the length of the runway based in the funds you have in your account. It also helps that there are multiple funding sources, so I can split the bill between multiple cards or accounts. I travel the major part of the year, and it is quite common to get my…

Unfortunately, this wasn't a payment issue so this wouldn't have saved you. It's a Know-Your-Customer issue, i.e prove you're not doing business with someone on the US embargo list.

DO, Vultr etc. would have the same issue depending on the timeframe they were given to prove compliance by the feds.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#52

Post by shadowgovt »

eastbound wrote: post #26
michaelteter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> failure of automation Many of the Google horror stories are less a failure of automation and more just a failure of well designed business processes. This same event could/would have occurred if it were humans sending the "additional information required" emails and also following a protocol of "shut them down in 10 days if they don't provide". The fact that this process was (most likely) automated is not the issue…

Every time I’m told it was an automatic system at Google, I doubt it. I can’t imagine all those heavy decisions aren’t actually reviewed by humans, who validate the automatic suggestions. Would anyone imagine that the decision to cut off a customer entirely, is not checked by a clerk? by a lawyer? The defense “It was automatic” doesn’t even pass the basic sanity test.

At Google's scale, cutting one paying customer isn't a heavy decision. That's what makes doing business with them so weird; it may be mission-critical to your business, but to them it's a Tuesday.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#53

Post by innodb1 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #32

“Moving Forward. Starting today, I will be making plans to move everything to AWS.” I laughed when I read this because it’s presenting moving to AWS as a completely different future. The industry has moved beyond depending on a single cloud computing vendor. It’s negligent to put all your eggs in one basket. I would say don’t put your business in the hands of a single cloud vendor. Either exit the cloud or go multi c…

Well Said

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#54

Post by looping__lui »

avsteele wrote: post #48

I hate how the internet age has conditioned customers to expect less. There is no way a non-internet business would cut off a client of 4-years without actually talking (phone) to them.

You mean like airlines, banks, insurances, utility companies etc.? If anything standards and expectations went up in a lot of areas - e.g., think one day shipping, returning stuff whenever you feel like etc.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#55

Post by shadowgovt »

michaelteter wrote: post #22

With many online services, if there is something that needs verification (like confirming your email address), every time you use the app you will see a banner at the top reminding you of this need. Anything that is a countdown to doom should be a persistent banner on the app, reminding you of the importance and maybe even showing how many days left you have to deal with it.

Google is actually uniquely bad at this. The system that displays notify banners for Cloud is a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen mechanism that requires multiple layers of authorizations, signoff, scrutiny, and binary changes to their UI.

For that reason, it isn't (at least, didn't used to be) blocking to roll a feature out for that pipeline to work, so a lot of things that should be top-banner messages weren't.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#56

Post by m00dy »

pirsquare wrote: post #7

Hi everyone, I'm the customer in this case. Wanted to let everyone know that this sort of abrupt suspension for production apps has been a recurring issue that has happened time and again with Google Clown Platform. Similar horror stories: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32547912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33737577 ----- [Update 1] Yes I agree I have some fault for the initial suspension, but that's no…

I rent one of dedicated machines in Hetzner. Cheap and performant.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#57

Post by newaccount74 »

londons_explore wrote: post #29

Google don't care what your name is... They just want to be paid. However, the law requires them to not do business with people on the US embargo list. And to verify that, they need your name. That is probably why there was no way to ignore this paperwork, and why customer service couldn't override it.

The problem isn't that they are suspending the account due to missing information. The problem is that they apparently consider a single email (that looks very similar to dozens of other emails that they send out) sufficient warning. Especially since most devs probably get dozens of spam emails a month that look more urgent ("Account Suspension" is a popular subject line for phishing emails).

At the very least they should try calling the account holder before suspending the account.

If they can't reach the account holder, they should re-enable the account very quickly after they reach them, and give them an extension with enough time to provide all the required information.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#58

Post by shadowgovt »

harry8 wrote: post #23

bait and switch. It's so easy, all you need is x. Then when you're far enough in they demand a through w or you're shutdown with extreme prejudice. Do they really need it? Is that what you agreed to? Did you negotiate the change in terms. "I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter the deal further..." They don't blush. They don't flinch they don't even blink. Good luck if you really don't have another choice. Is th…

TBF, Google definitely doesn't collect KYC data for fun. They'd much prefer not to.

But the Feds are pretty solid on the whole "Aiding and and abetting terrorism is treason" thing.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#59

Post by shadowgovt »

lbriner wrote: post #45
Havoc wrote: post #21

Is it just me or is google getting a disproportionate amount of locked out issues?

Proptional to their prices, probably very proportionate. If you want better service, choose another provider and pay the price that it costs to pay 1000s of customer support staff, sometimes to only answer things like "why can't I see my EC2 instance" or "Where can I find my invoices". Personally, I have found both Azure and AWS to be pretty responsive to Customer Service, although AWS can be quite blunt with their r…

Scale also. If this happens in just 0.00001% of cases, that's plenty of users to get one or two events a day.

Re: Our production servers were suspended by Google Cloud

#60

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #32

“Moving Forward. Starting today, I will be making plans to move everything to AWS.” I laughed when I read this because it’s presenting moving to AWS as a completely different future. The industry has moved beyond depending on a single cloud computing vendor. It’s negligent to put all your eggs in one basket. I would say don’t put your business in the hands of a single cloud vendor. Either exit the cloud or go multi c…

The difference is when something goes wrong at AWS someone picks up the phone, fixes your stuff, apologizes profusely, and give you a credit.

Mutlicloud is great but somewhat complicated to setup correctly.

The value add of AWS is that Amazon has unusually good customer service.

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