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Dumped by Google

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Re: Dumped by Google

#191

Post by gscott »

dragonwriter wrote: post #190
MichaelApproved wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the flood.

> Even the god in the fable you're referencing gave Noah advance notice of the flood. Yeah, but it wasn't Noah's ToS violation that the god involved was addressing.

There was no TOS violation, just an algorithm gone wild.

This happens to me all the time but with Google adwords

- Google Adwords tells me not to run more then one domain in an ad group then suspends the ad group... that has only one ad in it. Takes a week for Google to undo their suspension.

- Google Adwords suspends an ad, support says that during the signup process there should be a page that links to competitors with a comparison of prices as features. Sort of like going to a K-Mart but once your at the checkout the checker says "you shudda gone to Wal-Mart sucker!" (to save a dollar). Takes a week for Google to undo their suspension.

etc and so on. If you spend 20k a month or more with Google adwords when Google wants to give you pain they find very unusual ways to do it I presume to mess with your click history to force you to pay more, so Google quarterly profits go up. I presume this happens throughout Google's products.

Re: Dumped by Google

#192

Post by alexeston »

frozenport wrote: post #76
alexeston wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe I was not around then. I started when the shared hosting was a really popular thing with fixed bandwidth and even that could of easily survived HN. So, I'm kind of amazed on why some sites can't handle that in 2013.

When you exceed your limit they charge you a penalty.

Yes, but at least here in Estonia the limit was more than enough (usually 500gb of bandwidth per month).

Re: Dumped by Google

#193

Post by nikbackm »

DaddyDuck wrote: post #164
cseelus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I guess there is no alternative that can match GMail in terms of abailability/reliability, features, spamprotection, 3rd-party support etc. Would be nice if there was some community-driven, non-profit alternative available for such basic, albeit important things like email though.

While playing around with gmail, I found out that you can send from any smtp server emails to gmail pretending you are someone else's gmail account. There is no way of seeing from gmail that it isn't the trusted sender. The fake email is associated with social details from the real account. Weird right?

Better watch out so you don't violate the TOS and get locked out too.

Re: Dumped by Google

#195

Post by RawData »

SEMW wrote: post #148
RawData wrote: post #77

I don't understand why no one has sued google over this... That would be my first reaction...

English law student here. This isn't legal advice. Generally, in common law countries, if you're not paying Google for the services, the legal system won't help you. Since you gave no consideration for the services you got, there's no legal contract, so you can't even enforce their own terms of service against them. (In theory, an action in tort for negligent provision of services can succeed against a provider you d…

Consideraion doesn't necessarily have to be money...

Re: Dumped by Google

#196

Post by SEMW »

RawData wrote: post #195
SEMW wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English law student here. This isn't legal advice. Generally, in common law countries, if you're not paying Google for the services, the legal system won't help you. Since you gave no consideration for the services you got, there's no legal contract, so you can't even enforce their own terms of service against them. (In theory, an action in tort for negligent provision of services can succeed against a provider you d…

Consideraion doesn't necessarily have to be money...

I'm guessing you mean that having adverts shown to you might be good consideration?

I guess it's possible that it might be held to be, but it's by no means a given. (I don't know any English cases on that, but there may be US ones I'm not familiar with. All the cases of website terms I know are ones where the website owner wants to enforce against the user, so don't help, as AFAICS the courts only care whether the party seeking to enforce gave consideration (which they have: the service)).

But even if you succeed in that, it still might not help you. Seems to me that the effect of that would be to make the service a standing offer on Google's part. Analogy: a sign on a shack saying "Come in and take a biscuit if you view the advert on the wall". The consideration isn't in return for a promise to continue to provide services. If the shack owner removed the shack one day, you couldn't sue him for breach of contract.

Wheras if you've paid money for a service and they don't provide it, they're in breach, full stop. (Even if they claim you're in breach, they have to notify you and give you a reasonable time to cure it).

IANAL, and my consideration analysis might be completely wrong. But even if it is, I still strongly suspect it's not going to be easy to convince a court to hold Google in breach for stopping giving you a service you weren't paying for. If you're paying for a service, you're in a much more secure position.

Re: Dumped by Google

#197

Post by karussell »

Probably the author would have been interested in an article which I didn't finally publish ;) ... here are some (not always good ;)) Google alternatives

    Search: DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ask, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, Baidu
        Scholar: TODO
        Patent:TODO
        Image: Bing
        Shopping/price compare:
    Photos (Picasa): Flickr, SmugMug
    YouTube: Vimeo
    News: Yahoo, TODO
    Mail: Yahoo, Hotmail, Thunderbird, Fastmail
    GDrive (storage): Spideroak, Dropbox,
    Documents: Microsoft, Zoho, OpenOffice
    Calendar: Zoho, Hotmail, AOL Calendar, 1Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, 30 boxes
    Chrome (Browser): Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chromium with Chromatic
    Google+: Facebook, Twitter, Identica, Diaspora, LinkedIn, Foursquare
    Maps
        routing: OSRM, Bing (=Yahoo), MapQuest, GraphHopper ;)
        local search: Yelp, Bing (no API!)
        mobile: TomTom
        Google Streetmaps/Earth: Bing 3D
    News: Netvibes (full of google search ;)), Yahoo, Twitter, breakingnews
        Reader: Netvibes, liferea (Linux only)
        Alerts: Netvibes
    Translation: Microsoft
    Analytics: Piwik
    AdWords: TODO
    Google Books: nothing found!?
    Google Sites: Wikispaces, Zoho
    Google Talk/Hangout: skype, talkyoo
    Blogs: Wordpress, tumblr
    Code: GitHub, SourceForge, BitBucket
    Groups: SourceForge
    Checkout/Wallet: TODO
    Google Apps: Amazon
    Speech Recognition: Nuance
    Google Voice: PhoneBooth
    Google TV: Apple TV, Samsung, LG, ...
    Chrome OS: it's Lubuntu!
    Smartphone (Android): iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry, Ubuntu
    Play Store: Apple Store
        music: spotify, itunes
    Self-driving car: BMW, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan, ...
Parts of those information through lifehacker

ToDos for Google: Offline routing, Own Games, Porn, Ebay, Amazon clone

Re: Dumped by Google

#198

Post by RawData »

SEMW wrote: post #196
RawData wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consideraion doesn't necessarily have to be money...

I'm guessing you mean that having adverts shown to you might be good consideration? I guess it's possible that it might be held to be, but it's by no means a given. (I don't know any English cases on that, but there may be US ones I'm not familiar with. All the cases of website terms I know are ones where the website owner wants to enforce against the user, so don't help, as AFAICS the courts only care whether the pa…

If I offer to let you park your car in my garage for free, and then one day lock the door and take your car...I'm not allowed to do that just because I had been letting you park there for free. The car still belongs to you.

Likewise, google shouldnt be able to close a free account and keep all my email, my stored files, etc. it's ludicrous.

Yet thats exactly what they do..time and again...and people just bend over and take it.

Re: Dumped by Google

#199

Post by GFischer »

oliverhunt wrote: post #128
kybernetyk wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you suggest a viable alternative to Google Mail? I'm feeling uncomfortable having all my mail in Google's hands but haven't found an alternative yet.

Fastmail (paid) or Zoho(free)

I use Zoho, but for my low-volume personal account.

The main difference with Google is, I think they'd like to take my money :) and have customer support. If the need arises (hopefully some of my plans take off), I'll gladly pay them.

Re: Dumped by Google

#200

Post by mokash »

Derbasti wrote: post #176
mokash wrote: post #139

I think we need a paid email provider, someone who's sole business is to provide email services, and maybe a calendar. Someone who you can host your own domain with and someone who's mission it is to ensure their customers have privacy, security and can rely on their services. Someone who doesn't just guarantee their services for as much as you pay for them but someone who is willing to put their ass on the line to p…

Actually, getting a paid email account is easy. Just about every hosting provider out there also offers an email address. Web access is usually terrible though. If you're lucky, they provide roundcube, which is ok, but certainly inferior to Gmail. If you use IMAP and some desktop client, this might not be a problem. The hard part is the calendar and contacts. I don't know of any CalDAV or CardDav provider. Your best…

The biggest problem with web hosting providers' email services is the lack of effective spam filters similar to Gmail's though.
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