Apparently the answer was no: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/12/monday-ism-manufac...
Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
21–30 of 119 posts
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google _does_ do customer support. You are not their customers. Advertisers are.
Well, the advertisers I know have their share of Google complaints as well relating to customer service.
I'm sure if an advertiser spends $10M a month on Google ads, they have someone's cell phone they can call anytime if there are any issue, and that person will "fix" whatever the problem is. These are the Google customers, not the guy who spends $50 a month advertising his self-published book.
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#23Even if you use the recommended support channels such as Groups, your request goes nowhere. I've run into this reporting issues for Google Now and Picasa Web. Moderators continually move or delete reports of issues. When you explain the situation and why X is more appropriate than Y you get radio silence. Has anyone actually gotten real support from Google for paid applications? Is it limited to the Groups?
I use Google Apps (only two users!) and I got great support from them. I received multiple phone calls from them trying to help me with an issue.
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#24"I'll keep trying - maybe someone at Google could help?" Doubtful. Getting support from Google is pretty much impossible (you do have slightly increased chances since you've put it on HN however). If I were you, I'd initiate a domain transfer to a different registrar that will actually provide support when you need it before your domain expires. Even if you're lucky enough to have Google resolve the issue this time,…
What are you talking about, I saw "The Internship." Google has enough phone support to tell grandmothers how to fix GMail problems. Likely a manager will be cut over this, just like the snooty guy who led the other team in the movie. /s
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#25Why not move the domain?
They like using the service Google provides and they really want to continue paying for it. Not everyone gets their rocks off serving a popular website and tuning the dozens of arcane knobs to make it hum as well as Google can.
They probably don't want to pay $$$$ for someone else to move it and/or host it. Migrating years of posts and all the comments... that's a decent sized job. Even if the export/import to some other blogging engine was nearly perfect (Hint: it's not all roses and perfume), there's a dozen or more billable hours involved to make it run exactly the way it did before on another host. That's probably more than he spends in a year at the current location.
...and so on. There are plenty of good reasons not to move it.
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#26Another example of how Google does not do customer support. I would get the domain and move it somewhere else.
Google _does_ do customer support. You are not their customers. Advertisers are.
This is the right answer. I managed an Adwords campaign that had a spend in the mid to high six figures a year, and we had standing meetings with support every week. I don't like the fact this this is how it works, but I understand the reality.
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google _does_ do customer support. You are not their customers. Advertisers are.
So what you're saying is he should contact the ad team to request a price quote for running an ad for "how do i avoid having google shut down my blog?" :)
This will get a response, not because you are trying to pay Google money, but because you are trying to use the word "google" in an ad. Had an ad for an App Engine related service blocked for a few days until a human could verify that the message containing the word "google" was appropriate.
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#28From my friend at Google: "It looks like he used the wrong account to update his credit card. He has a Google Apps account connected to his Blogger/url purchase, this is the account he needs to update in Google Wallet."
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#29Heavily relying on Google product? ✓ Hitting a dead-end with Google's customer service? ✓ Have an existing audience you can leverage to get some random Google employee's attention? ✓ Reach front page of Hacker News? ✓ Good news! You should have your problem fixed in 2-5 business days. The rest of us suckers relying on google services get to stare at our inboxes helplessly, waiting for a response to our support ticket…
I've been backing up my Gmail with getmail [0], as I'm afraid that a day will come when I'll be locked out of my gmail account and will have no way to restore it. My long term solution is to migrate completely off of gmail, but for now this does the trick pretty nicely.
[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backup_Gmail_with_getma...
Re: Will Google Kill my Blog on December 6th?
#30I honestly thought this was going be an article on probability: Given the frequency of Google shutting down its services, what is the likelihood of my blog service being terminated on December 6th?